AUL  ELMER  MORE 


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OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

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IN  MEMORY  OF 
MRS.  VIRGINIA  B.  SPORER 


r- 


Prinrrton  UnittrrBitg 

THE  LOUIS  CLARK  VANUXEM  FOUNDATION 
LECTURES  FOR  1917-1918 


of  prtnalon  IntuFrfittg 

was  established  in  1912  with  a  bequest  of  $25,000 
under  the  will  of  Louis  Clark  Vanuxem,  of  the 
Class  of  1879.  By  direction  of  the  executors  of 
Mr.  Vanuxem's  estate,  the  income  of  the  foun- 
dation is  to  be  used  for  a  series  of  public  lectures 
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The  following  lectures  have  already  been  pub- 
lished or  are  in  press: 

1912-13  The  Theory  of  Permutable  Functions,  by 
Vito  Volterra 

1913-14  Lectures  delivered  in  connection  with  the 
dedication  of  the  Graduate  CoUege  of 
Princeton  University  by  Emile  Boutroux, 
Alois  Riehl,  A.  D.  Godley,  and  Arthur 
Shipley 

1914-15     Romance,  by  Sir  Walter  Raleigh 

1915-16  A  Critique  of  the  Theory  of  Evolution, 
by  Thomas  Hunt  Morgan 

1916-17  The  Mineral  Resources  of  Civilization, 
by  Charles  R.  Vein  Hise 

1917-18    Platonism,  by  Paul  Elmer  More 


LOUIS  CLARK  VANUXEM  FOUNDATION 


PLATONISM 


BY 

PAUL  ELMER  MORE 

AUTHOB  OF   THE  "SHKLBtTKNE  ESSATS" 


LECTURES  DELIVERED  AT  PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY 
OCTOBER  29,  80,  81,  NOVEMBER  6,  7,  1917 


PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

PRINCETON 

LONDON:  HUMPHREY  MILFORD 

OXFORD  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

1917 


Copyright,  1917,  by 
Pkinceton  Ukitbrsitt  Pbebs 

Pnblished  November,  1917 
Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


Library 

/f/7 


Ato  8t)  ^t)  SiT  atTtias  ctS-jy  SvopC^ecrdaL,  to  fxev 
avayKOLOv,  to  8e  Oelov,  /cat  to  /i,€i/  ^eiov  ev  dtrao'LV 
^r^Telv  KTTJ<Te(os  eveKa  evSaLfiovos  ^lov,  Koff  o<tov 
rjfi(ov  rj  <f)V(TL^  ivh€)(^eTai,  to  Be  dvayKalov  iKetvotv 
^dpiv,  XoyL^ofievOv  a>9  avev  tovtojv  ov  hwaTo.  avrd 
eKelva  c^'  ots  (rirovSa^ofiev  /xoi/a  KaTavoeiv  ovS*  av 
Xa^elv  aits'  aXXtos  ttco?  /xerao-^ctv. — Timaeus,  68e. 

*Ei^  (jiv  eiropiardfieda  <f)L\o(ro<f)Las  yevos,  ov  fiel^ov 
dyadov  ovr  rfkdev  ovre  rj^ei  rrore  T(p  Ov7)t^  yeveu 
Bcjp-qdev  Ik  deS)v. — Timaeus ,  47a. 


2012^'^^ 


PREFACE 

Though  this  book  goes  out  under  the  rather 
presiunptuous  title  of  Platonism,  no  one  can  be 
more  aware  than  the  author  of  the  incomplete- 
ness of  its  argument.  Almost  nothing,  for  in- 
stance, is  said  of  education  and  art  and  govern- 
ment, to  name  a  few  of  the  subsidiary  subjects 
that  occupy  a  large  and  important  place  in  the 
Dialogues.  These  alluring  topics  have  been 
passed  by,  somewhat  reluctantly,  in  order  that 
attention  might  be  concentrated  on  the  ethical 
theme  that  runs  through  all  Plato's  discussions 
and  is  certainly  the  mainspring  of  his  philosophy. 
At  another  time  and  in  another  volume  I  may 
undertake  to  fill  out  the  omissions  here  acknow- 
ledged; but,  whether  that  is  done  or  not,  my  pur- 
pose in  the  work  now  pubhshed  has  been  to  lay 
the  foundation  for  a  series  of  studies  on  the  ori- 
gins and  early  environment  of  Christianity  and 
on  such  more  modem  movements  as  the  English 
revival  of  philosophic  religion  in  the  seventeenth 
century  and  the  rise  of  romanticism  in  the  eigh- 
teenth. My  conviction  is  that  behind  all  these 
movements  the  strongest  single  influence  has 
been  the  perilous  spirit  of  liberation  brought  into 
the  world  by  the  disciple  of  Socrates,  and  that  our 


▼i  PREFACE 

mental  and  moral  atmosphere,  so  to  speak,  is 
still  permeated  with  inveterate  perversions  of 
Plato's  doctrine. 

It  will  be  seen  that  my  aim,  in  the  present  vol- 
imie  and  in  its  projected  sequels,  is  not  so  much 
to  produce  a  work  of  history — ^though,  of  course, 
historical  accuracy  must  be  the  first  requisite — as 
to  write  what  a  Greek  Platonist  would  have  called 
a  Protrepticus,  an  invitation,  that  is,  to  the  prac- 
tice of  philosophy.  In  saying  this  I  am  under 
no  delusion  as  to  what  such  a  work  is  likely  to 
accomplish.  Readers  of  settled  convictions  who 
happen  to  take  up  this  presentation  of  philosophy 
will  accept  or  reject  it  in  accordance  with  the 
bent  of  their  minds ;  and  I  know  that  the  current 
of  thought  today  runs  against  me  and  not  with 
me.  It  is  a  fact  to  be  reckoned  with  now,  as  it 
was  when  Socrates  talked  on  these  matters  in  the 
gaol  of  Athens,  that  for  those  who  differ  on  fun- 
damental principles  there  is  no  conmion  counsel 
but  only  contempt  for  each  other ;  as  St.  Augus- 
tine says,  si  non  sit  intus  qui  doceat  inanis  fit 
strepitus  noster.  My  hope  would  be  with  those 
who  are  still  searching — particularly  if  I  might 
touch  the  minds  of  a  few  of  our  generous  college 
youth  who,  finding  the  intellectual  Hfe  deprived 
of  centre  or  significance,  drift  through  the  sup- 
posedly utihtarian  courses  of  economics  and  bio- 
logy, and  so  enter  the  world  with  no  better 
preparation  against  its  distractions  than  a  vague 


PREFACE  vii 

and  soon-spent  yearning  for  social  service  and  a 
benumbing  trust  in  mechanical  progress.  I  can 
foresee  no  restoration  of  humane  studies  to  their 
lost  position  of  leadership  until  they  are  felt  once 
more  to  radiate  from  some  central  spiritual  truth. 
I  do  not  believe  that  the  aesthetic  charms  of  liter- 
ature can  supply  this  want,  nor  is  it  clear  to  me 
that  a  purely  scientific  analysis  of  the  facts  of 
moral  experience  can  furnish  the  needed  motive ; 
the  former  is  too  apt  to  run  into  dilettantism,  and 
the  latter  appeals  too  little  to  the  imagination 
and  the  springs  of  enthusiasm.  Only  through  \ 
the  centralizing  force  of  religious  faith  or  through  j 
its  equivalent  in  philosophy  can  the  intellectual  I 
life  regain  its  meaning  and  authority  for  earnest^; 
men.  Yet,  for  the  present  at  least,  the  dogmas 
of  religion  have  lost  their  hold,  while  the  current 
philosophy  of  the  schools  has  become  in  large 
measure  a  quibbling  of  speciahsts  on  technical 
points  of  minor  importance,  or,  where  serious, 
too  commonly  has  surrendered  to  that  flattery  of 
the  instinctive  elements  of  human  nature  which 
is  the  very  negation  of  mental  and  moral  disci- 
pline. 

It  is  in  such  a  belief  and  such  a  hope,  whether 
right  or  wrong,  that  I  have  turned  back  to  the 
truth,  still  potent  and  fresh  and  salutary,  which 
Plato  expounded  in  the  troubled  and  doubting 
days  of  Greece — the  truth  which  is  in  religion  but 
is  not  boimded  by  rehgious  dogma,  and  which 


viii  PREFACE 

needs  no  confirmation  by  miracle  or  inspired  tra- 
dition. The  first  task  before  me  was  to  see  this 
philosophy  in  its  naked  outlines,  stripped  of  its 
confusing  accessories,  and  cleared  of  the  misun- 
derstandings which,  starting  among  the  barba- 
rians of  Alexandria,  have  made  of  Platonism  too 
often  a  support  instead  of  a  corrective  of  the 
disintegrating  forces  of  society.  This  I  have  at- 
tempted to  do,  with  imperfect  success  no  doubt, 
in  the  present  volume.  If,  when  the  series  is 
completed,  I  may  have  succeeded  in  directing  a 
few  seeking  minds  to  the  inexhaustible  soiu*ce  of 
strength  and  comfort  in  the  Platonic  Dialogues, 
I  shall  account  my  labour  amply  rewarded.  Of 
strength  and  comfort  we  have  need  enough  in 
these  trying  times,  and  shall  have  no  less  need  in 
the  days  of  peace,  when  they  come. 

To  one  criticism  I  should  be  sensitive.  Those 
who  have  read  the  eighth  volimie  of  my  Shelhurne 
Essays  will  recognize  that  the  present  work  is 
virtually  an  expansion  of  the  views  there  summed 
up  in  the  Definitions  of  Dualism,  and  they  may 
think  that  I  have  tried  to  impose  my  own  theories 
on  Plato,  to  measure  him  in  my  pint  cup.  In  a 
way  every  interpreter  of  a  great  author  must  be 
open  to  such  a  charge;  he  has  no  other  measiu*e 
than  his  own  capacity.  But  at  least  I  am  not 
guilty  of  attempting  to  force  Plato  into  confor- 
mity with  a  preconceived  system ;  the  Definitions 
of  Dualism  were  themselves  the  result  of  my 


PREFACE  ix 

study  of  the  Dialogues,  and  avowedly  rejected 
any  pretensions  to  originality. 

In  making  the  translations  from  Plato  scat- 
tered through  the  following  pages  I  have  often 
had  other  versions  before  me,  and  have  not  scru- 
pled to  draw  on  them  quite  freely  for  words  and 
phrases.  Where  these  passages  are  included  in 
inverted  conmaas,  I  have  adhered  to  the  original 
as  closely  as  possible  while  conforming  to  Eng- 
hsh  idiom.  The  passages  not  so  indicated,  but 
noted  by  marginal  references,  are  rather  allu- 
sions than  quotations. 

Finally,  I  have  to  thank  the  trustees  of  the 
Vanuxem  fund  for  permitting  me  to  print  in  this 
volume  a  large  amount  of  material  which  it 
was  impossible  to  include  in  the  course  of  five 
lectures. 


P.  E.  M. 


Princeton,  N.  J., 

May  1,  1917. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface v 

I  The  Three  Socratic  Theses 1 

II  The  Socratic  Quest 38 

III  The  Platonic  Quest 54 

IV  The  Socratic  Paradox:  the  DuaUsm 

of  Plato 79 

V  Psychology    118 

VI  The  Doctrine  of  Ideas 162 

VII  Science  and  Cosmogony 204 

VIII  Metaphysics    282 

IX  Conclusion 270 

Appendix 299 


PLATONISM 

CHAPTER  I 

THE  THREE  SOCRATIC  THESES 
No  person  of  antiquity,  scarcely  any  of  the 
modem  world,  has  been  portrayed  so  vividly  as 
the  master  whom  Plato  made  the  responsible 
mouthpiece  of  his  speculations.  We  seem  to  de- 
scry the  man  Socrates  in  the  very  flesh ;  we  can  al- 
most hear  his  voice,  as  he  talked  with  friends  and 
strangers  in  the  agora  and  other  meeting-places 
of  Athens.  But  when  we  come  to  consider  him  as 
a  philosopher  in  his  own  right,  and  to  determine 
precisely  what  he  taught,  the  way  is  not  so  plain. 
Of  the  two  main  witnesses  on  whom  we  must  rely 
for  our  knowledge  of  his  teaching,  the  one,  our 
gossiping  Xenophon,  understood  him  too  little, 
whereas  the  other  understood  him,  in  a  manner, 
too  well,  developing  his  instruction  into  so  rich 
and  voluminous  a  body  of  thought  that  Socrates 
might  have  exclaimed  with  some  apparent  reason, 
as  indeed  he  is  said  actually  to  have  done  on 
hearing  one  of  the  simpler  of  Plato's  Dialogues : 
"By  Heracles,  what  lies  the  young  man  has  told 
about  me  I"    Our  conception  of  the  Socratic  phil- 

1 


«  PLATONISM 

osophy  is  thus,  like  the  Eros  of  the  wonderful 
ymp^sium  ^Qjj^^j^  q£  jvxantinea,  the  child  of  Penury  and 
Abundance — an    Abundance,    we    might    add, 
"drunken  with  the  drink  of  the  gods." 

Yet  withal  the  leading  theses  of  Socrates  are 
in  themselves,  and  taken  separately,  clear  enough 
— or  ought  to  be  so  to  any  one  who  approaches 
the  subject  with  open  mind — and  the  real  diffi- 
culty begins  only  when  we  undertake  to  combine 
them  into  a  coherent  system,  and  to  weigh  their 
remoter  consequences.  These  leading  doctrines, 
armem  es  j^  ^^  ^^y.  ^-^^  ^^^j^  ^  uamc  to  thc  impulscs  that 

carried  him  towards  philosophy,  were  three:  an 
intellectual  scepticism,  a  spiritual  affirmation, 
and  a  tenacious  belief  in  the  identity  of  virtue  and 
knowledge. 

Of  the  sceptical,  questioning  disposition  of  So- 
crates we  have  ample  testimony.  This  was  the 
trait,  particularly  as  it  touched  the  common  tra- 
dition in  matters  of  government  and  morals,  that 
most  impressed  those  of  his  contemporaries  who 
did  not  belong  to  the  inner  circle  of  disciples. 
And  probably  the  irony  of  Socrates,  his  real  or 
feigned  ignorance  used  as  a  dissolvent  of  the  as- 
sumed knowledge  of  others,  is  the  characteristic 
first  suggested  today  by  the  mention  of  his  name. 
He  himself,  when  obliged  to  defend  his  life  be- 
fore the  tribunal  of  his  fellow  citizens,  manfully 
admitted  this  scepticism,  and  even  claimed  for  it 
Apology  2iA   a  divine  sanction.    One  of  his  friends,  so  he  de- 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  8 

clared,  had  gone  to  Delphi  to  inquire  of  the  oracle 
whether  there  was  any  one  wiser  than  Socrates, 
and  had  been  told  that  there  was  none  wiser. 
Whereupon  Socrates,  amazed  and  incredulous, 
had  put  himself  to  the  task  of  testing  this  strange 
saying.  His  method  of  inquiry  (which  we  may 
suppose  he  had  employed  from  the  beginning  of 
his  public  career,  though  with  less  dehberate  pur- 
pose before  the  intervention  of  the  oracle)  was  to 
select  a  man  eminent  for  wisdom,  and  to  cross- 
question  him  about  his  knowledge;  and  this  he 
did  repeatedly,  and  always  with  the  same  result. 
"It  would  soon  become  apparent,"  he  says,  "that 
to  many  people,  and  most  of  all  to  himself,  the 
man  seemed  to  be  wise,  whereas  in  truth  he  was 
not  so  at  all.  Thereupon  I  would  try  to  show 
him  how  he  was  wise  in  opinion  only  and  not  in 
reality;  but  I  merely  made  myself  a  nuisance  to 
him  and  to  many  of  those  about  him.  So  I  used 
to  go  away  reflecting  that  at  least  I  was  wiser 
than  this  man.  Neither  of  us,  I  would  say  to 
myself,  knows  anything  much  worth  while,  but 
he  in  his  ignorance  thinks  he  knows,  whereas  I 
neither  know  nor  think  I  know."^ 

*  I  hold  for  many  reasons  that  the  biographical  parts  of 
the  Apology,  Crito,  and  Phaedo  present  a  faithful  picture 
of  the  man  Socrates,  and  in  the  main  give  a  true  account 
of  his  last  days,  however  the  glamour  of  Plato's  rhetoric 
may  lie  over  the  whole.  It  is  easier  to  believe  in  the  jx)wer 
of  Nature  to  create  such  a  character  than  in  the  ability  of 
an  author  to  imagine  it.     Furthermore,  though  Xenophon 


4  PLATONISM 

But  if  the  existence,  even  the  predominance, 
of  the  doubting  mood  in  Socrates  cannot  be  over- 
looked, the  quahty  of  this  scepticism  needs  none 
the  less  to  be  sharply  distinguished  from  what 
commonly  passes  under  the  name.  The  matter 
stands  thus.  Absolute  suspension  of  judgment, 
however  a  man  may  profess  it  in  words  or  strive 
to  attain  it  in  practice,  is  an  impossibility.  You 
may  deny  the  power  of  human  reason  to  explain 
the  cause  and  ultimate  nature  of  things ;  but  the 
moment  you  do  this,  you  will  find  yourself,  if  you 
examine  your  mind  honestly,  putting  credence  in 
some  faculty  either  above  the  reason  or  below 
the  reason.  Some  relation  to  appearances  you 
must  assume,  some  motive  of  action  you  are 
bound  to  obey,  some  affirmation  you  are  forced 
to  make ;  ^  the  only  choice  is  to  which  of  the  alter- 
native solicitations  you  will  say  yes,  and  to  which 
you  will  say  no.  Thus,  when  a  man  calls  himself 
a  sceptic,  it  commonly  means  that  he  subscribes 
to  some  form  of  materialistic  dogma,  and  practi- 

probably  had  little  intercourse  with  Socrates  and  certainly 
was  no  philosopher,  yet  he  gives  the  same  report  of  So- 
crates* ordinary  ways  of  life,  and  one  can  find  in  the  Me- 
morabilia clear  traces  of  the  three  Socratic  theses. 

*  This  fact  is  virtually  acknowledged  by  the  clever  ex- 
ponent of  ancient  scepticism,  Sextus  Empiricus.  See  his 
Hypotyposes  \,  17,  et  passim.  As  for  modern  agnostics, 
so-called,  they  too  reserve  their  scepticism  for  the  "unknow- 
able" things  of  the  spirit,  and  are  thorough-going  dogma- 
tists in  their  theories  of  conduct  based  on  the    Ueia  irdOr). 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  5 

cally  believes  that  pleasures  and  pains  of  the 
body,  however  he  may  refine  and  intellectualize 
their  quality,  are  the  one  certain  fact  of  experi- 
ence. As  the  followers  of  Aristippus  used  to 
say:  "Only  our  sensations  are  comprehensible." 
This  creed  may  be  adopted  from  mere  indolence 
of  mind,  or  in  the  combative  manner  of  the 
schools — but  with  results  curiously  alike.  Ac- 
cording to  his  first  disciple,  Pyrrho,  the  father  of 
professional  scepticism,  reduced  the  problems  of 
philosophy  to  these  three:  "What  is  the  nature 
of  things?  How  should  we  be  disposed  towards 
them?  What  is  the  consequence  to  us  of  this  de- 
termination?" The  answer  was  that  we  know 
nothing  of  the  great  forces  playing  about  us,  and 
that  he  is  wise  who,  freeing  his  soul  of  trouble- 
some fears  or  questions,  does  not  look  beyond  the 
pleasure  within  his  reach.'  There  is  a  pretty 
parable  that  tells  how  Pyrrho  enforced  this  doc- 
trine. Being  once  at  sea  and  caught  in  a  storm, 
he  rebuked  the  terror  of  the  passengers  by  point- 
ing to  a  little  pig  that  kept  on  feeding  through 
all  the  commotion — such,  he  said,  ought  to  be  the 
tranquillity  of  the  wise  man.  There  is  an  affir- 
mation in  this — deck  and  disguise  it  as  you  will — 
the  affirmation  of  the  sty:  pinguem  et  nitidum 
vises  Epicuri  de  grege  porcum.  Such  a  man  may 
call  himself  a  philosophical  sceptic  by  reason  of 
his  anti-rationahsm,  but  his  philosophy  comes 

*  See  Eusebios,  Praeparatio  Evangelica  xiv,  1 8,  2. 


6  PLATONISM 

from  a  plane  below  the  reason,  and  is  hard  to  dis- 
tinguish from  the  indolent  self-assurance  that  is 
content  to  do  without  thinking  at  all. 

If  we  take  the  word  "sceptic"  in  its  truer  sense, 
as  describing  one  who  takes  nothing  on  trust  but 
examines  the  facts  of  experience  to  their  last  con- 
clusion, the  Epicurean  or  Pyrrhonist  has  no  right 
to  the  name,  since  he  still  labours  under  the  de- 
lusion of  supposing  he  knows  what  he  does  not 
know,  and  has  yet  to  learn  that  pleasure  and  pain 
have  no  final  value  in  themselves,  but  must  be  es- 
timated by  their  relation  to  values  of  quite  an- 
other order.  Manifestly,  at  least,  the  scepticism 
of  Socrates  was  no  Pyrrhonic  drifting  with  the 
current  of  opinion;  it  meant  to  him  rather  an 
unwearied  questioning  of  the  solicitations  of  both 
the  reason  and  the  senses,  and  a  continuous  ex- 
ercise of  the  will,  being  of  all  states  of  mind  the 
rarest  and  the  most  difficult  for  a  man  in  this 
world  to  maintain.  Doubt  was  thus  to  Socrates 
the  beginning  both  of  philosophy  and  of  morality 
— of  philosophy,  since  only  those  are  prompted 
Lysu  218a  to  philosophizc  truly  who  are  ignorant  and,  at  the 
same  time,  aware  of  their  ignorance ;  of  morality, 
since  only  those  will  feel  the  compelling  of  a 
higher  impulse  who  have  seen  through  the  illu- 
sory curtain  of  the  senses.  When  Socrates  came 
to  explain  to  the  court  why  he  had  not  hesitated 
in  a  course  of  action  which  was  sure  to  bring  him 
into  peril  of  losing  what  most  men  prize,  includ- 


\ 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  7 

ing  life  itself,  he  replied  boldly  that  he  had  foW 
lowed  the  behest  of  the  God  for  the  reason  that 
of  those  so-called  perils  we  have  no  real  know- 
ledge— not  even  of  the  greatest  of  them.  "For 
the  fear  of  death,"  he  said,  "is  just  another  form  Apology  29a 
of  appearing  wise  when  we  are  foolish,  and  of 
seeming  to  know  what  we  know  not.  No  mortal 
knoweth  of  death  whether  it  be  not  the  greatest 
of  all  good  things  to  man,  yet  do  men  fear  it  as 
if  they  knew  it  to  be  the  greatest  of  evils.  And  is 
not  this  that  most  culpable  ignorance  which  pre- 
tends to  know  what  it  knows  not?"  This  sounds 
like  the  parable  of  Pyrrho  and  his  pig;  but  note 
the  difference  in  the  consequences  drawn.  So- 
crates was  not  contradicting  himself,  but  was 
basing  his  conduct  on  a  profounder  form  of  scep- 
ticism than  Pyrrho's,  when,  in  one  and  the  same 
discourse,  he  avowed  that  his  only  wisdom  was 
to  know  his  own  ignorance,  yet  declared  himself 
ready  to  face  death  with  this  downright  affirma- 
tion :  "To  do  wrong  and  to  disobey  our  superior, 
whether  human  or  divine,  this  I  do  know  to  be  an 
evil  and  shameful  thing."  He  had  an  invincible 
assurance  of  this  spiritual  fact  for  the  very  reason 
that  his  scepticism  went  deep  enough  to  include 
those  current  judgments  and  those  immediate 
values  of  sensation  which  to  a  Pyrrho  were  the 
only  certain  guides  through  the  perplexities  of 
life. 

There  is,  then,  no  inconsistency  in  the  union  of 


8  PLATONISM 

intellectual  scepticism  and  spiritual  affirmation; 
rather,  scepticism  is  the  negative  aspect  of  the 
same  intuitive  truth  of  which  spiritual  affirmation 
is  the  positive  aspect.  It  would  even  be  a  grave 
error — the  gravest  of  all  errors  in  its  possible 
consequences — to  reckon  the  sceptical  attitude, 
because  it  is  purely  negative,  as  less  essential  to 
the  Socratic  life  than  its  positive  counterpart. 
It  is,  if  anything,  more  essential ;  for  its  authority 
extends  in  a  way  beyond  reason  and  the  senses  to 
the  highest  citadel  of  the  soul.  Our  one  safe- 
guard against  a  host  of  ruinous  deceptions  that 
speak  in  the  name  of  the  spirit  is  the  obstinate 
interrogation  of  every  affirmation  of  every  sort, 
and  the  holding  of  each  presumptive  truth  to  give 
proof  of  itself  in  experience.  In  later  years  these 
two  aspects  of  Socratic  doctrine  were  developed 
independently  into  separate  schools,  the  sceptic, 
of  which  we  have  spoken,  and  the  Neoplatonic. 
If  Socrates  had  been  alive,  and  had  been  forced 
to  choose  between  the  books  of  a  Sextus  Empiri- 
cus,  let  us  say,  who  in  the  name  of  scepticism  re- 
jected all  authority  of  reason  and  the  higher  in- 
tuition, and  the  books  of  a  Proclus,  who  accepted 
almost  without  discrimination  any  words  uttered 
in  the  name  of  the  spirit,  he  would  have  ranged 
himself,  I  am  sure,  with  Sextus,  and  would  have 
expended  his  powers  of  irony  upon  the  religious 
jargon  of  the  self-styled  Platonist.  He  would 
have  preferred  the  half-truth  of  the  one  to  the 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  9 

sham-truth  of  the  other;  and  Plato  would  have 
made  the  same  choice. 

But  if  it  is  easy  to  see  how  true  scepticism  and 
spiritual  intuition  may  go  hand  in  hand,  the  case 
is  different  when  to  these  two  theses  we  add  the 
third.  It  was  one  of  Socrates'  favorite  maxims 
that  no  man  errs,  or  sins,  willingly,  but  only 
through  ignorance — a  saying  hard  to  reconcile 
with  the  actual  conduct  of  the  world,  hard  to  re- 
concile with  the  other  aspects  of  the  Socratic  doc- 
trine. On  its  face  this  maxim  implies  an  equation 
of  virtue  and  knowledge,  and  by  knowledge  the 
evidence  obliges  us  to  beheve  that  Socrates  meant, 
not  indeed  a  Pyrrhonic  acquiescence  in  the  solici- 
tations of  the  present,  but  that  larger  calculation 
of  life  in  the  terms  of  pleasure  and  pain  which 
from  his  day  to  this  has  been  the  mark  of  the 
rationalizing  utilitarian.  As  we  know  better,  he 
would  say,  the  near  and  remote  consequences  of 
our  acts  in  those  terms,  we  are  enabled  to  conduct 
ourselves  more  prudently;  and  this  prudence  is 
virtue.  How,  one  asks  in  some  bewilderment, 
can  a  teacher  maintain  such  a  thesis  as  this,  yet 
as  a  sceptic  reject  the  authority  of  the  senses,  and 
as  a  mystic  avow  that  his  morality  depends  on  a 
superrational  intuition  ?  How  can  the  same  man 
be  a  rationalizing  utilitarian  and  a  sceptical 
mystic?  '"~"         "  '  — ~ 

However  perplexing  such  a  union  of  contra- 
ries may  appear  to  us,  we  have  nothing  to  do  but 


10  PLATONISM 

to  accept  the  paradox  as  it  stands.  Above  all  we 
must  not  emphasize  the  rationalistic  thesis  so  as 
to  suppress  the  other  two.  In  that  way  we  should 
fall  into  the  totally  inadequate  conception  of  So- 
crates made  current  to-day  by  the  Greek  Think- 
ers of  Theodor  Gomperz.  According  to  that  bril- 
liant and  much-quoted  history,  the  Platonic  So- 
crates, with  his  rehgious  and  fundamentally  scep- 
tical traits,  is  to  be  rejected  for  a  mere  questioner 
of  popular  tradition  and  promoter  of  the  ration- 
afistic  "Enlightenment."  The  story  in  the 
Apology  of  his  self -dedication  to  the  service  of 
the  God  is  pure  moonshine;  Socrates  had  one 
simple  aim,  to  set  forth  the  imity  of  virtue  and 
knowledge,  and  to  that  end  there  was  no  need  of 
exhortation  or  animating  appeal,  no  room  for  any 
positive  ethical  teaching  based  on  an  authority 
higher  than  reason.  Now  the  Socrates  of  this 
school  of  interpreters  is  an  impossibihty — a  crea- 
ture manufactured  in  a  Teutonic  phrontisterion, 
and  not  the  living  man  of  Athens  from  whom  the 
deepest  inspiration  of  philosophy  has  flowed  even 
to  this  day.  Gomperz  himself  offers  a  corrective 
to  his  portrait  by  quoting  as  the  motto  for  his 
volume  this  sentence  from  Clement  of  Alexan- 
dria: "Wherefore  also  Cleanthes  in  his  second 
book  Concerning  Pleasure  says  that  Socrates  al- 
ways identified  the  just  man  and  the  happy  man, 
and  cursed  him  who  first  distinguished  between 
the  just  and  the  profitable  as  one  who  had  dons 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  11 

an  impious  thing''  There  is  decidedly  something 
of  the  exhorter  and  preacher  of  virtue  in  the 
words  itahcized,  though  we  need  not,  for  all 
that,  picture  Socrates  quite  as  a  Lutheran  par- 
son. If  Clement  is  right,  and  Plato  was  not  a 
mere  mystificator,  and  if  human  nature  has  any 
place  in  the  study  of  philosophy,  then  Gomperz 
is  wrong.  We  may  be  certain  that  beneath  the 
irony  of  Socrates,  deeper  than  his  questioning  of 
popular  phrases  and  his  search  for  precision  of 
definition,  lay  a  power  of  very  positive  teaching 
and  a  direct  appeal  to  the  conscience,  in  his  own 
way  and  at  his  own  time,  which  smote  the  heart 
even  of  such  a  worldling  as  Alcibiades  to  the 
quick,  and  shall  never  cease  to  vibrate  in  the 
hearts  of  living  men.  Plutarch  was  in  the  right 
tradition  when,  remembering  the  confession  of 
Alcibiades,  he  said  that  "outwardly  Socrates  to 
those  who  met  him  appeared  rude  and  uncouth 
and  overbearing,  but  within  was  full  of  earnest- 
ness and  of  matters  that  moved  his  hearers  to 
tears  and  wrung  their  hearts."* 

On  the  other  hand  we  must  be  on  our  guard 
against  the  contrary  extreme  of  those  scholars, 
such  as  Burnet  and  Taylor  of  St.  Andrews,  who, 
in  their  laudable  desire  to  reinstate  Socrates  as  a 
religious  teacher  and  seer,  go  so  far  as  to  make  a 
mechanical  division  between  the  rationalistic  and 
the  mystical  elements  in  the  Platonic  Dialogues, 

*  Cato  vii. 


1«  PLATONISM 

and  then  relegate  all  the  former  to  Plato  himself 
and  derive  all  the  latter  from  Socrates.  Profes- 
sor Burnet^  would  even  have  us  believe  that  in 
the  earlier  Dialogues,  down  to  and  including  The 
Republic,  Plato  was  merely  reproducing  as  a 
dramatic  artist  the  mystic  and  idealistic  Pytha- 
goreanism  of  his  master,  whereas  in  the  later  Dia- 
logues he  breaks  away  from  this  and  gives  ex- 
pression to  his  own  scientific  and  anti-Socratic 
rationalism.  Now,  with  all  due  deference  to  the 
great  learning  of  Professor  Burnet,  one  must  say 
that  such  a  theory  has  no  warrant  in  history  or  in 
common  sense.  To  assert  that  a  man  could  write 
The  Republic  without  a  definite  philosophy  of  his 
own  is  to  run  pretty  close  to  a  pedantic  absurd- 
ity; and  it  is  not  much  better  to  maintain  that 
there  was  no  rationalism  in  the  teaching  of  So- 
crates than  that  there  was  no  mysticism  in  the 
teaching  of  Plato. 

The  efforts  of  various  scholars  to  escape  the 
Socratic  Paradox  by  representing  him  on  the  one 
hand  as  a  pure  rationalist  or  on  the  other  hand 
as  a  pure  mystic  are  equally  untenable.  So  far 
as  we  can  judge  from  the  records,  Socrates  never 
attempted  to  find  an  interpretation  of  the  word 
"knowledge"  which  should  reconcile  his  third 
thesis  with  the  other  two,  nor  did  he  even,  we  may 
suppose,  see  quite  so  logical  a  synthesis  of  his 
intellectual  scepticism  and  higher  intuition  as  we 

»  Greek  Philosophy,  Part  I,  pp.  178,  179  ff. 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  18 

have  felt  justified  in  deriving  from  the  language 
of  the  Apology.  For  the  most  part  he  was  con- 
tent, it  should  appear,  to  enunciate  his  three 
principles  as  independent  truths,  and  to  enforce 
now  one  and  now  another  of  them  as  occasion 
prompted,  leaving  to  his  disciples,  the  creators 
of  the  so-called  Socratic  schools,  the  labour  of 
constructing  from  them  what  properly  may  be 
regarded  as  a  philosophic  system.  Endless  in- 
consistencies and  controversies  were  to  arise 
among  his  successors  from  the  varying  emphasis 
placed  by  them  on  the  different  aspects  of  his 
creed.  To  Plato  alone  it  was  given  to  combine 
the  three  theses  without  sacrificing  one  for  the 
other,  and  so  to  develop  a  philosophy  that  tran- 
scended the  master's  actual  teaching  while  in  no 
fundamental  matter  betraying  it.  So  success- 
fully did  he  accomplish  this  great  task  that  to 
the  world  at  large  Socrates  has  come  to  stand 
for  httle  more  than  a  mouthpiece  of  the  Pla- 
tonic speculations.  Nevertheless  we  shall  be  do- 
ing a  grave  injustice  if,  caught  by  the  spell  of 
Plato's  richer  and  subtler  genius,  we  forget  that 
the  imposing  enunciation  of  his  three  doctrines 
by  Plato's  teacher  was  the  determining  event  in 
the  moral  and  religious  life  of  the  Western 
world;  for  the  supreme  need  of  a  man's  soul  is 
not  that  he  should  acquire  a  splendid  system  of 
philosophy,  but  that  he  should  hold  as  an  inex- 
pugnable possession  that  spirit  of  scepticism  and 


14  PLATONISM 

insight  and  that  assurance  of  the  identity  of  vir- 
tue and  knowledge  for  which  Socrates  Hved  and 
died.« 

Yet  however  important,  even  revolutionary, 
the  work  of  Socrates  may  appear,  we  must  re- 
member that  he  was  only  one  teacher  among 
many;  nor  can  we  rightly  imderstand  the  Pla- 
tonic philosophy  without  taking  into  account  the 
strong  currents  of  thought,  sympathetic  and 
antipathetic,  amid  which  it  took  its  origin.  The 
age  of  Socrates  was  notable  for  an  intellectual 
curiosity  and  a  moral  fermentation  for  which 
there  is  perhaps  only  one  parallel  in  history,  and 
that  parallel  takes  us  out  of  Europe  to  Asia. 
There,  in  the  country  of  the  Ganges,  at  a  some- 
what earher  date,  the  old  formahties  of  rehgion 
had  ceased  to  satisfy  the  devout  Hindu  wor- 
shipper, and  he  could  no  longer  accept  the  tradi- 
tional precepts  of  morahty  until  he  had  justified 
them  at  the  bar  of  his  own  conscience.  Every- 
where men  were  asking  themselves  and  one  an- 
other about  the  underlying  truth  of  things,  and 
a  rumour  went  abroad  that  certain  lonely  ex- 
plorers had  discovered  a  treasure  of  knowledge 
which  they  held  as  a  secret  possession.  And  so 
the  books  of  the  period  are  filled  with  stories, 

"  The  Christian  philosophy  of  Pascal  is  founded  on  three 
similar  principles:  "II  faut  avoir  ces  trois  qualites,  pyr- 
rhonien,  g^ometre,  Chretien  soumis;  et  elles  s'accordent,  et 
se  temperent,  en  doutant  ou  11  faut,  en  assurant  ou  il  faut, 
et  en  se  soumettant  ou  il  faut." — Pensee  268,  Brunschvicg. 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  16 

some  of  them  quaint  and  obscure,  others  very 
beautiful,  of  eager  inquirers  who  went  out  into 
the  wilderness,  where  the  sages  had  their  solitary 
abodes,  to  question  and  Hsten,  and  to  learn,  if 
they  were  deemed  worthy,  the  new  meaning  of 
the  old  words  of  rehgion  and  morahty. 

Something  hke  that,  though  the  methods  of 
teaching  and  the  final  results  were  different,  was 
going  on  in  Greece  during  the  lifetime  of  Socra- 
tes. The  supposed  possessors  of  the  secret  were 
not  eremites  hiding  in  the  forest  depths,  but 
teachers  who  called  themselves  sophists  and  went 
about  from  city  to  city  imparting  instruction  for 
a  price;  and  the  inquirers  who  flocked  to  their 
lectures  were  not,  for  the  most  part,  religious 
enthusiasts,  but  young  men  of  family  who  were 
looking  for  the  readiest  path  to  honour  and  power 
in  civic  life.  Yet,  withal,  the  mental  and  moral 
ferments  were  much  the  same  as  in  India,  and  in 
both  lands  the  deepest  problems  of  law  and  faith 
did  not  pass  through  the  ordeal  untouched. 

Not  the  least  extraordinary  of  Plato's  literary 
gifts  is  his  skill  in  reproducing  in  a  colder  age 
the  ardour  which  surrounded  his  childhood  and 
youth.  In  the  opening  of  such  a  Dialogue  as  the 
Protagoras,  for  instance,  there  is  a  note  of  excite- 
ment, of  expectation,  which  carries  the  reader 
back  to  a  society  stirred  by  a  veritable  renaissance 
of  wonder.  Even  the  more  conservative  citizens 
were  moved,  some  to  hostility,  some  to  friendly 


16  PLATONISM 

curiosity.  So,  in  the  Theages,  we  have  a  charm- 
ingly realistic  picture  of  an  elderly  man,  of  posi- 
tion and  property,  coming  into  Athens  from  the 
country  to  consult  Socrates  about  the  education 
of  his  son ;  for  the  boy  has  heard  rumours  of  the 
marvellous  cunning  of  these  professors  who  are 
flocking  to  the  city  from  the  ends  of  the  world, 
and  is  determined  to  place  himself  as  a  pupil 
under  one  of  them.  The  father,  as  befits  a  solid 
man  of  the  soil,  is  bewildered  and  anxious;  he 
doesn't  mind  spending  the  necessary  money,  but 
he  has  his  suspicion  of  these  innovations  and  he 
fears  they  are  as  likely  to  corrupt  as  to  inform. 
Whereupon  Socrates  turns  to  the  young  man, 
and  quizzes  him  to  bring  out  just  what  he  thinks 
this  new  wisdom  is  and  what  it  will  do  for  him. 

Now  to  many  scholars  of  our  age  Socrates  was 
not  much  different  from  any  other  of  these  vota- 
ries of  new-fangled  ideas ;  and,  superficially,  there 
is  some  basis  for  this  fatal  confusion.  But  the 
moment  we  apply  to  these  wandering  teachers 
the  test  of  the  three  Socratic  theses  we  see  that  in 
their  attitude  towards  the  central  truth  of  philo- 
sophy they  stood  at  the  opposite  pole  from  So- 
crates; we  see,  too,  how  deeply  the  intellectual 
and  moral  destiny  of  Greece  was  involved  in  this 
difference. 

Some  of  the  sophists  may  have  been  inclined 
to  dogmatic  rationalism,  and  could  therefore 
scarcely  be  called  sceptics  in  any  sense  of  the 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  17 

word.  But  for  the  most  part  they  were  question- 
ers and  innovators  by  profession,  in  harmony  with 
the  common  unrest  of  the  times.  Their  general 
position  is  fairly  expressed  in  the  famous  maxim  ^'J^Id' 
of  Protagoras,  that  "Man  is  the  measure  of  all 
things."  Such  a  principle  might  seem  on  its  face  Theaetetus 
— as  it  has  seemed  to  certain  modern  critics — to  lt%assim 
be  in  accord  with  Socrates'  habit  of  putting  the 
received  laws  of  conduct  to  the  test  of  human  ex- 
perience ;  and  this  indeed  would  be  the  case,  were 
it  not  for  the  utterly  diverse  meanings  that  may 
be  attached  to  the  word  "man."  Now  Protagoras 
had  in  mind  to  say  that  right  and  wrong  are  mat- 
ters of  human  opinion,  being  actually  to  each 
man  as  his  good  pleasure  thinks  them  to  be. 
More  than  that,  they  not  only  vary  in  their  na- 
ture with  the  opinions  of  different  men,  but  de- 
pend on  the  changing  moods  of  each  individual 
man,  so  that  what  is  right  and  just  for  me  at  this 
moment  may  be  at  another  moment  the  very  re- 
verse of  right  and  just.  In  other  words,  by 
"man"  Protagoras  meant  the  impression  of  the 
senses  and  the  dictates  of  temperament,  and  vir- 
tually denied  the  existence  of  that  unchanging 
law  on  which  Socrates  based  his  conduct  when  he 
declared  himself  ignorant  of  all  things  save  of 
this  one  fact,  that  it  is  better  for  a  man  to  be 
just  than  to  be  unjust,  and  better,  if  needs  be,  to 
suffer  wrong  than  to  do  wrong. 

The  issue  between  the  two  ways  of  life  is 


Theaetetus 
162d 


18  PLATONISM 

brought  out  more  sharply  by  adding  to  the 
Protagorean  maxim  already  quoted  his  other  fa- 
mous saying,  that  of  the  gods  we  have  no  know- 
ledge whether  they  are  or  are  not,  and  by  con- 
trasting with  these  statements  the  terse  epigram 
of  Plato,  that,  if  we  cared  for  our  happiness, 
Laws  716c  "Not  auy  man,  as  some  say,  but  God  would  be  the 
measure  of  all  things."  Plato,  when  he  wrote 
these  words  in  his  old  age,  was  thinking  not  so 
much  of  a  deity  set  apart  in  a  remote  region  of 
the  heavens,  or  even  of  a  deity  immanent  in  the 
human  breast,  as  of  that  element  of  the  soul  it- 
self which  is  capable  of  rendering  a  man  like  to  a 
god.  He,  too,  in  his  way,  was  making  man  the 
measure  of  all  things;  but  by  man  he  had  learnt 
from  his  master  to  think  first,  not  of  the  opinions 
that  separate  one  man  from  another,  and  a  man 
today  from  himself  of  yesterday,  but  of  the  divine 
principle  that  is  the  same  in  all  men  and  forms 
therefore  the  only  true  bond  of  friendship  and  so- 
ciety. It  was  just  this  principle  of  the  innate 
divine  that  Protagoras  denied — certainly  at  least 
Plato  so  understood  him — when  he  made  man  the 
measure  of  truth  and  avowed  that  of  the  gods 
there  was  no  way  of  knowing  whether  they  were 
or  were  not.  And,  whatever  apparent  exceptions 
there  may  have  been  here  and  there,  Protagoras 
was  in  this  representative  of  the  whole  body  of 
the  sophists.  By  omitting  the  Socratic  affirma- 
tion from  their  scheme  they  turned  their  philo- 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  19 

sophy,  so  far  as  they  had  any,  in  the  direction  of 
that  Pyrrhonic  scepticism  which  is  the  very  con- 
trary of  the  Socratic. 

The  same  essential  difference  between  So- 
crates and  the  sophists  comes  out  when  we  pass 
from  scepticism  and  spiritual  afiirmation  to  the 
third  thesis.  So  far  as  it  is  possible  to  group  to- 
gether men  who  formed  no  cohesive  party,  but 
professed  each  after  his  own  desire,  the  sophists 
were  at  least  in  agreement  among  themselves  in 
the  belief  that  virtue  and  knowledge  are  some- 
how identical ;  in  fact  it  was  their  avowed  mission 
to  impart  the  knowledge  requisite  for  virtue,  as 
the  thing  virtue  was  commonly  understood.  And 
they  had  a  useful  function  to  perform.  Their 
instruction  was  partly  of  a  purely  objective  sort, 
and  as  such  valuable  in  itself.  As  for  their  rhet- 
oric, Socrates  did  not  hesitate  to  admit  that  he 
had  acquired  some  of  his  perfectly  legitimate 
skill  in  the  use  of  words  from  Prodicus  and  other 
such  teachers.  And  so,  in  the  absence  of  schools 
beyond  the  most  elementary  sort,  the  sophists 
must  enjoy  the  credit  of  sharing  in  the  advance- 
ment of  practical  education.  Even  here,  indeed, 
we  begin  to  see  the  divergence  between  their 
method  and  that  of  Socrates,  for  Socrates  was  too 
genuinely  sceptical,  of  himself  as  well  as  of  oth- 
ers, to  go  about  like  an  ambulatory  university 
lecturing  for  a  fee  on  any  province  of  science  or 
art  then  known  to  mankind.    But  that  is  a  minor 


«0  PLATONISM 

matter.  The  serious  divergence  was  in  their  pur- 
pose. If  there  is  any  truth  in  Plato's  account  of 
the  debates  between  Socrates  and  such  masters 
of  the  craft  as  Gorgias  and  Protagoras,  it  is  clear 
that  the  sophists  directed  their  instruction  chiefly 
to  the  acquisition  of  skill  in  manipulating  indi- 
vidual men  and  popular  assemblies.  I  do  not 
mean  to  say,  following  an  ancient  accusation, 
that  the  sophists  set  out  deliberately  to  instruct 
men  in  the  art  of  making  the  better  cause  appear 
the  worse,  in  the  sense  that  they  had  any  vicious 
or  anti-social  end  in  view;  but  rather  that  they 
had  in  view  no  end  at  all,  except  the  end  of  suc- 
cess. Their  concern  was  very  much  with  practi- 
cal cleverness  and  very  little  with  moral  conse- 
quences, very  much  with  current  opinion  and  very 
Httle  with  truth  for  its  own  sake;  hence  the  su- 
preme place  of  rhetoric  in  their  curriculum,  as 
the  art  of  persuasion.  They  would  have  accepted 
as  readily  as  Socrates  the  identification  of  vir- 
tue and  knowledge;  but  they  identified  the  two 
by  making  them  both  a  means,  without  stopping 
to  ask  themselves  or  others  the  means  to  what. 
In  the  quest  of  that  what  Socrates  was  to  pass 
his  life ;  and  if  he  was  still  searching  and  had  not 
reached  the  goal  of  the  great  quest  when  death 
put  an  end  to  all  his  asking,  it  was  because  he  had 
not  discovered  the  relation  of  the  knowledge  that 
determines  virtue  to  the  knowledge  that  belongs 
to  scepticism  and  spiritual  affirmation. 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  21 

Such  is  the  contrast  between  Socrates  and  the 
sophists  the  moment  we  apply  to  them  the  test 
of  the  three  theses.  To  ignore  this  radical  differ- 
ence in  favor  of  the  surface  resemblances,  as  has 
been  somewhat  the  practice  since  Grote's  power- 
ful rehabilitation  of  the  sophists,  is  to  overlook 
the  whole  significance  of  the  Socratic  teaching, 
and  it  is  to  miss  terribly  the  tragic  lesson  of  his- 
tory. This  was  no  paltry  feud  over  scholastic 
terms,  but  the  battle  of  one  man  who  saw  the 
truth  and  knew  the  consequences  of  error  against 
a  host  of  men  who  looked  upon  the  truth  with  the 
eyes  of  a  Pontius  Pilate ;  rather,  it  was  the  battle 
of  one  man  for  the  deeper  common  sense  of  man- 
kind against  the  sophistries  of  a  people  that  had 
lost  its  anchorage  and  was  drifting  it  knew  not 
whither. 

The  Greeks  are  distinguished  from  other  great 
peoples  by  their  lack  of  any  really  sacred  books 
or  of  a  definite  revelation ;  and  to  this  freedom  of 
their  imagination  we  owe  a  religion  which  of  all 
religions  is  the  most  purely  human  and  the  most 
nearly  universal,  almost  as  full  of  meaning  to- 
day, for  those  who  understand  it,  as  it  was  to  the 
contemporaries  of  Socrates.  But  this  freedom 
was  a  peril  also,  as  all  liberty  is  perilous.  In  an 
age  of  doubt  and  egoistic  revolt  from  tradition 
such  a  religion,  unless  its  deeper  meaning  meets 
with  some  authentication  in  the  individual  con- 
sciousness, is  peculiarly  liable  to  lose  its  moral 


««  PLATONISM 

hold  and  to  become  a  plaything  for  the  fancy  of 
its  votaries.  This  is  the  easy  way;  it  was  the  di- 
rection in  which  the  educated  classes  of  Greece 
were  naturally  turning,  and  the  Protagorean 
scepticism,  with  its  flattering  plausibility,  was 
ready  at  hand  to  cloak  moral  indolence  in  the 
garb  of  philosophy. 

The  Greeks,  again,  as  we  see  them  typified 
from  the  beginning  in  Odysseus,  were  incHned  to 
cleverness  and  versatihty  more  than  to  plain 
truth,  and  apt  to  lay  weight  on  the  value  of 
worldly  wisdom  somewhat  at  the  expense  of  in- 
stinctive rectitude.  They  were  always  a  little  too 
quick  to  applaud  knowledge  for  its  own  sake  and 
to  measiu*e  virtue  by  the  standard  of  success. 
And  this  disposition  was  fostered  by  the  sophists 
at  a  critical  moment  of  history.  Plato  laid  his 
finger  on  one  of  the  spots  where  the  decay  of  na- 
tional character  first  discovered  itself,  when  he 
phaedrus  272d  dcclarcd  that  for  the  rhetorician,  trained  to  plead 
before  the  courts,  there  was  no  need  to  bother 
over  the  exact  nature  of  justice  and  goodness, 
since  no  juror  would  take  heed  of  such  subtleties, 
but  would  be  guided  in  his  vote  by  the  force  of 
persuasion  based  on  probabihty.  Any  one  con- 
versant with  the  Uterature  of  the  Greek  people 
knows  how  large  a  place  the  word  "probable" 
occupies  in  their  whole  manner  of  thinking,  and 
how  cunningly  the  sophistical  game  played  with 
the  national  foible. 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  28 

What  came  in  the  end  of  this  itching  cleverness 
and  this  adroit  flattery  can  be  read  in  the  Roman 
estimate  of  Greece  in  her  degeneracy : 

"Augur  schoenobates  medicus  magus, 
omnia  novit 
Graeculus  esuriens;  in  caelum  miseris, 
ibit."'' 
Or,  if  it  seems  unfair  to  accept  the  petulant  sat- 
ire of  Juvenal  as  historical  evidence,  some  credit 
at  least  must  be  allowed  to  Cicero's  comparison 
of  Greek  and  Roman  witnesses  under  oath.  "He 
had,"  he  says,  in  his  oration  Pro  Flacco,  "always 
been  particularly  addicted  to  that  nation  and 
their  studies,  and  knew  many  modest  and  worthy 
men  among  them.    But  as  to  the  sanctity  of  an 
oath,  they  had  no  notion  of  it;  all  their  concern 
in  giving  evidence  was,  not  how  to  prove,  but 
how  to  express  what  they  said.     Whereas   a 
Roman,   in  giving  his   testimony,   was   always 
jealous  of  himself,  lest  he  should  go  too  far; 
weighed  all  his  words,  and  was  afraid  to  let  any- 
thing drop  from  him  too  hastily  and  passion- 
ately."®    Or  still,   if  we  hesitate  to   take  the 

''  Juvenal  iii,  77.  It  is  amusing  to  see  how  Dr.  Johnson 
adapted  the  lines  to  what  was  a  corresponding  prejudice, 
in  his  day  not  entirely  unwarranted,  against  the  French: 

"They  sing,  they  dance,  clean  shoes,  or  cure  a  clap; 
All  sciences  a  fasting  Monsieur  knows. 
And,  bid  him  go  to  hell,  to  hell  he  goes." 

•Abridged  from  Middleton's  paraphrase.  Life  of  Cicero 
I,  800,  ed.  1741. 


24  PLATONISM 

Roman  estimate  of  a  conquered  and  subject 
people,  there  is  the  direct  statement  of  Polybius,® 
himself  a  Greek,  as  to  the  slipperiness  of  the 
Greek  character  resulting  from  their  rejection  of 
the  restraints  of  religion. 

All  this  was  involved  in  the  difference  between 
Socrates  and  the  sophists;  and  unless  we  see 
clearly  how  the  destiny  of  the  Athenian  people, 
and  one  might  say  of  the  world,  was  at  stake,  we 
shall  make  nonsense  of  the  solemnity  with  which 
Apology 30d  Socrates  proclaimed  his  mission:  "Therefore,  O 
men  of  Athens,  I  am  not  concerned  to  plead  for 
myself,  as  one  might  expect  of  me,  but  am  rather 
pleading  for  you,  lest  by  condemning  me  in  your 
ignorance  you  throw  away  God's  gift  to  you.  .  .  . 
That  I  am  really  such  an  one  given  to  the  city  by 
God,  you  may  understand  from  my  life ;  for  it  is 
not  from  merely  human  motives  that  I  neglect 
my  own  affairs  and  see  them  going  to  waste  these 
many  years,  while  I  look  unweariedly  to  your 
interests,  and  come  to  you  all  individually,  as  if 
I  were  a  father  or  an  elder  brother,  with  my 
message  and  persuasion  of  virtue."  Such  was 
the  last  public  profession  of  Socrates,  and  it  was 
not  heard.  This  is  not  to  say  that  the  general  de- 
cline of  Greek  civilization  should  be  attributed  to 
any  special  class  of  men  as  the  deliberate  source 
of  corruption.    The  serious  corrupters  of  youth, 

^  History  vi,  54,  55.     See  also  the  use  made  of  this  pas- 
sage by  Warburton  in  his  Divine  Legation  \,  408. 


THE  SOCRATIC  THESES  «6 

to  use  the  phrase  of  the  indictment  against  So- 
crates, were  not  the  sophists,  as  Plato  himself 
admits,  but  the  mass  of  the  people,  who  were  ^4^2^'^ 
jealous  of  any  distinction  that  ran  counter  to 
their  own  ideas,  and  made  resistance  to  the  course 
they  were  pursuing  extremely  difficult,  even  dan- 
gerous. The  pity  of  it  was  that  at  this  moment 
of  intellectual  curiosity  and  moral  restlessness, 
when  many  generous  minds  here  and  there  had 
caught  ghmpses  of  a  higher  law  than  tradition 
and  needed  to  be  encouraged  in  their  quest  of 
truth,  the  accredited  teachers  of  the  land  should 
have  disappointed  the  searchers  and  left  them 
without  any  power  of  united  resistance.  The 
condemnation  of  the  sophists,  as  a  body,  is  not 
that  they  turned  the  current  of  thought  in  a  new 
direction,  but  that  they  were  themselves  so  deeply 
immersed  in  the  popular  tide,  and  lent  their 
weight  to  its  onward  sweep. 

Unless  this  is  true  there  is  no  meaning  at  all  in 
those  earlier  Dialogues  of  Plato  in  which  he  at- 
tacks the  rhetoric  of  the  sophists  as  being  no 
genuine  art,  but  only  one  of  the  many  branches 
of  popular  flattery,  like  cooking  and  the  rest.  ^S^L 
When  he  wrote  these  Dialogues,  the  particular 
men  with  whom  Socrates  had  contended  were  no 
longer  living,  but  the  evil  they  had  fostered  was 
very  much  alive,  was  even  growing  daily  more 
manifest  to  any  one  who  looked  beneath  the  sur- 
face of  things.    Hence  the  note  of  bitterness  and 


26  PLATONISM 

occasionally  of  despondence  in  the  writings  of 
the  one  man  who  saw  to  the  heart  of  the  contrast 
between  Socrates  and  the  sophists,  and,  knowing 
he  had  failed  to  convert  his  own  generation  to 
the  Socratic  doctrine,  did  not  know  that  he  was 
establishing  this  doctrine  for  future  ages  as  the 
Timaeus  47b  iudcf cctiblc  sourcc  of  pMlosophy,  "than  which  no 
greater  good  has  come  or  ever  will  come  to  mortal 
men." 

Out  of  the  depths  of  his  inner  life  Socrates  had 
arrived  at  the  conviction  of  three  truths,  two  of 
/  which,  scepticism  and  spiritual  affirmation,  were, 
/  as  we  have  seen,  intimately  associated,  while  the 
/  third,  the  rationaUstic  identification  of  virtue  and 
knowledge,  stood  in  apparently  unrelated  isola- 
tion. It  was  the  task  of  his  successor  to  expound 
these  theses  in  a  way  that  should  force  their  ac- 
ceptance upon  any  man  who  looked  honestly  into 
his  own  breast,  and  to  carry  them  up  to  a  point 
at  which  they  should  all  three  meet  in  a  single 
harmonious  system  of  philosophy.  I  do  not 
mean  that  Plato  saw  the  task  lying  before  him 
in  this  limited  and  systematic  form:  his  mind 
was  too  elastic,  and  his  outlook  on  hfe  too 
crowded  with  images  of  men  and  their  destinies, 
to  be  confined  in  any  formula  however  large.  I 
mean  rather  that  these  theses  were  his  funda- 
mental conviction,  as  they  were  of  Socrates — the 
skeleton,  so  to  speak,  which,  more  or  less  con- 
cealed, gave  shape  and  strength  and  coherence  to 


THE  SOCRATOC  THESES  27 

all  his  thought.  And  we  on  our  part,  if  we  may 
borrow  Plato's  license  in  shifting  a  metaphor, 
we,  who  would  "swim  through  such  and  so  great 
a  sea  of  words"  as  stretches  before  us  in  the  Di- 
alogues, can  find  no  safer  light  to  guide  us  than 
these  three  motives  to  philosophy  which  he  him- 
self took  from  his  master. 


Parmenides 
137a 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST 

The  fidelity  with  which  Plato  brings  out  the 
threefold  impulse  of  Socrates  to  philosophy  is 
evidence  in  itself  that  the  same  motives  were  at 
work  in  his  own  mind.  But  they  are  equally 
manifest  in  passages  from  which  the  biographical 
element  is  entirely  absent.  The  theoretical  basis 
of  his  scepticism  may  be  left  until  we  take  up  the 
discussion  of  his  attitude  towards  metaphysics; 
here  it  will  be  sufiicient  to  call  attention  to  the 
note  of  profound  disillusion  running  all  through 
his  works,  and  growing  stronger  with  his  age. 
^^803b  «rpj^g  doings  of  men,"  he  declares  at  the  end  of  his 
life,  "are  not  worthy  of  great  seriousness,  yet  it  is 
necessary  to  be  serious;  and  this  is  our  misfort- 
une. .  .  .  Men  are  for  the  most  part  puppets, 
and  little  is  their  share  of  truth."  Socrates,  I 
think,  would  never  have  spoken  in  just  that  tone 
of  bitterness,  bom  of  a  longer  and  sadder  know- 
ledge; but  Plato's  words,  nevertheless,  spring 
^^^""™  from  the  same  vein  of  sceptical  irony  as  that 
which  he  had  so  often  seen  his  master  display  in 
common  intercourse.  So  deeply  ingrained  is  this 
note  of  doubt  or  hesitation  in  the  Dialogues  that 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  29 

the  leaders  of  the  Academy  after  Plato's  death 
passed  by  an  easy  transition  into  a  form  of  scept- 
icism barely  distinguishable  from  that  of  the  fol- 
lowers of  Pyrrho.  These  men,  if  we  may  accept 
the  verdict^  of  a  late  critic,  justified  their  posi- 
tion, in  part,  by  Plato's  own  fondness  for  such 
terms  as  "the  probable"  (to  eikos),  thereby  forc- 
ing his  philosophy  into  accord  with  the  teaching 
of  the  sophists — an  irony  of  Fate  comparable  to 
that  which  brought  about  the  condemnation  of 
Socrates  as  a  sophist. 

As  for  spiritual  affirmation,  Plato's  language 
is  fairly  exultant  with  the  faith  in  righteousness 
as  the  one  thing  which  a  man  may  safely  assert, 
against  all  appearances,  to  be  always  desirable. 
Even  above  his  magnificent  art  of  exposition  and 
dialectic,  his  real  power  of  persuasion,  for  those 
who  have  ears  to  hear,  hes  in  the  earnestness  of 
this  direct  and  unwavering  affirmation.  When 
Socrates,  in  gaol  and  awaiting  the  hour  of  execu- 
tion, was  urged  by  his  dear  friend  Crito  to  bribe 
his  way  to  liberty,  he  closed  his  memorable  state- 
ment of  the  self-imposed  obligations  of  duty  with 
a  simile  borrowed  from  the  experience  of  relig- 
ious devotees.  "These  things,"  he  said,  "I  seem  crito  s4d 
to  hear  as  the  Corybantes  think  they  hear  the 
sound  of  flutes,  and  the  echo  of  these  words  keeps 

^  Prolegomena  §  10.  This  treatise,  whether  by  Olympi- 
odorus  or  another,  is  by  no  means  negligible  for  the 
modem  student. 


30  PLATONISM 

up  such  a  humming  in  my  ears  as  quite  to  drown 
out  any  contrary  arguments."  So  it  is  today 
with  the  understanding  reader  of  the  Platonic 
Dialogues:  he  is  like  one  who  has  hearkened  to 
the  same  incantation  of  magic  flutes,  the  very 
memory  of  which  is  able  to  overpower  all  the  dis- 
tracting voices  of  the  world.  But  Plato  was  not 
writing  only  for  the  anima  naturaliter  Platonica. 
As  a  teacher  needing  withal  to  maintain  his  doc- 
trine logically  against  the  attack  of  adversaries, 
he  could  not  rest  in  a  bare  affirmation;  he  was 
bound  to  discover  some  authority  for  his  faith, 
some  definition  of  this  higher  knowledge,  to  which 
reason,  if  honest  with  itself,  would  at  least  will- 
ingly assent. 

Fiui;hermore,  the  tendency  to  a  positive  ration- 
ahsm  was  as  strong  in  Plato  as  it  was  in  Socrates. 
His  belief  in  the  simple  identification  of  virtue 
and  knowledge  is  constantly  coming  to  the  sur- 
860D  ff  face  in  his  writings,  and  even  in  the  Laws  he  is 
still  reasoning  on  the  famihar  Socratic  thesis  that 
no  man  errs,  or  sins,  willingly,  but  only  through 
ignorance.  Now,  as  I  have  said,  such  a  maxim 
seems  on  its  face  to  run  counter  to  the  known 
motives  of  human  conduct,  since  any  man,  if 
questioned  on  his  conduct,  will  admit  that  he 
often  does  wrong  against  the  knowledge  of  what 
he  knows  to  be  best  for  him.  Here,  then,  is  an 
issue  between  philosophy  and  apparent  fact ;  and 
if  you  solve  this  difficulty  by  explaining  the  equa- 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  31 

tion  of  virtue  and  knowledge  after  the  manner  of 
the  utihtarians,  as  Socrates  and  Plato  did,  you 
forthwith  lay  yourself  open  to  the  charge  of 
throwing  away  your  spiritual  affirmation. 

At  the  outset  of  his  philosophical  career  Plato 
was  thus  beset  with  the  double  problem,  first  of 
justifying  separately  his  rationahsm  and  his 
higher  intuition,  and  then  of  harmonizing  these 
two  seemingly  contradictory  positions.  So  far  as 
we  can  conjecture  from  the  records,  Socrates 
himself  had  faced  and  solved  the  problem  of 
rationalism  raised  by  his  identification  of  virtue 
and  knowledge,  and  to  this  extent  Plato,  in  writ- 
ing his  Dialogues,  had  only  to  repeat  and  clarify 
the  steps  of  what  may  be  called  the  Socratic 
Quest.  But  at  this  point  Socrates  ceased  to  be 
an  expositor  of  his  own  philosophy:  for  the  justi- 
fication of  spiritual  insight  before  the  bar  of  rea- 
son, which  may  be  called  the  Platonic  Quest,  and 
for  the  relation  of  insight  and  rationalism,  which 
had  been  left  as  the  Socratic  Paradox,  Plato  had 
to  rely  on  his  own  resources  of  argument.  Our 
study  of  Platonism,  therefore,  will  follow  this 
order:  taking  up  first  the  Socratic  Quest,  we  shall 
pass  then  to  the  Platonic  Quest,  and  from  these 
proceed  to  the  Socratic  Paradox.  Or,  expressed 
in  the  language  of  the  three  theses,  our  task  is, 
first,  to  deal  with  the  rationalistic  identification 
of  virtue  and  knowledge,  secondly  to  see  how 
scepticism  leads  from  this  thesis  to  spiritual  af- 


82  PLATONISM 

firmation,  and,  thirdly,  to  discover  how  this  ra- 
tionalism and  affirmation  can  be  held  together. 

Now,  there  is  a  group  of  Dialogues,  almost 
certainly  the  earliest  written,  in  which  Plato  is 
engaged  in  pursuing  the  Socratic  Quest,  as  if 
lured  on  by  a  goal  already  clearly  enough  seen 
and  within  easy  reach,  yet  at  the  same  time  with 
glimpses  of  another  goal  beyond,  still  wrapped  in 
the  haze  of  distance.  None  of  these  Dialogues  is 
conclusive,  and  at  the  end  of  each  the  reader  is 
left  in  a  mood  like  that  of  the  ancient  Persian, 
who  complained  that  he  had  heard  great  argu- 
ment 

"About  it  and  about,  but  evermore 
Came  out  by  the  same  door  where  in  he  went." 

Meanwhile,  however,  these  Dialogues  wind  in 
and  out  of  their  theme  with  such  delightful  ease, 
and  gather  by  the  way  so  many  charming  pictures 
of  Athenian  manners,  that  they  might  well  be 
named  the  idylls  of  philosophy.  Indeed,  if  I  may 
confess  my  private  taste,  I  almost  at  times  hold 
them  more  precious  than  those  greater  Dialogues 
in  which  Plato  no  longer  speaks  as  an  inquirer 
but  as  a  perfect  master.  For  Truth,  it  may  be, 
is  to  be  worshipped  at  a  distance,  a  creature  so 
high  and  divine  that  no  man,  not  even  a  Plato, 
can  lay  hands  on  her  without  a  little  soiling  her 
robes.    And  these  early  Dialogues,  as  I  assume 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  83 

them  to  be,  have  the  peculiar  fascination  of  sug- 
gesting the  truth  to  us  as  something  certain  yet 
unapproached. 

Each  of  them  sets  out  to  define  a  particular 
virtue — Charmides  temperance,  Laches  bravery, 
Euthyphro  holiness.  Lysis  friendship — and  ends 
by  rejecting  as  inadequate  or  inconsistent  the 
various  proposed  definitions.  But  through  all 
their  inconclusiveness,  these  two  thoughts  are 
continually  before  the  mind:  that  in  some  way 
which  the  debaters  cannot  understand  the  diiffer- 
ent  virtues  are  distinct  from  one  another,  yet  at 
the  same  time  merely  aspects  of  one  all-embracing 
virtue;  and,  secondly,  that  in  some  way,  equally 
obscure  to  the  debaters,  this  one  inclusive  virtue 
is  dependent  on  knowledge. 

A  glance  at  one  of  these  early  Dialogues  will 
indicate  the  character  of  all.  In  the  Charmides 
we  find  a  boy  of  this  name  presented  by  his  elder 
cousin  and  guardian,  Critias,  to  Socrates  as  a 
perfect  specimen  of  that  comeliness  and  grace 
and  modesty,  united  with  strength  and  self- 
mastery,  which  gave  to  the  youth  of  that  age  and 
land  their  peculiarly  androgynous  charm.  He  is 
the  embodiment  of  the  much-lauded  and  much- 
desired  virtue  of  sdphrosyne,  which,  for  lack  of  a 
better  equivalent,  we  translate  "temperance." 
And  Socrates,  having  introduced  the  topic  by  one 
of  his  dramatic  ruses,  proceeds  to  question  the 
lad  about  this  virtue,  insinuating  that  he  ought  to 


84)  PLATONISM 

be  able  to  define  it  if  it  is  really  in  his  possession. 
Temperance,  replies  the  boy,  after  some  hesita- 
tion, is  a  way  of  doing  things  sedately,  a  kind  of 
quietness  or  slowness  in  action.  And  so  the  dis- 
cussion begins ;  for,  in  his  usual  manner,  Socrates 
finds  difficulties  in  this  definition.  Certainly,  he 
says,  and  Charmides  admits,  temperance  is  one 
of  the  fair  and  excellent  things  {ton  kalon) ;  yet 
we  should  not  bestow  such  epithets  upon  a  person 
who  learned  his  lesson  or  ran  a  race  slowly,  but 
upon  one  who  was  swift  and  agile.  The  lad,  thus 
driven  from  his  first  definition,  tries  another:  it 
is,  he  thinks,  a  kind  of  true  shame  or  modesty. 
But  again,  objects  Socrates,  surely  temperance 
is  a  good  thing,  as  well  as  a  fair  thing,  and,  as 
Homer  has  declared,  modesty  is  not  always  good 
for  a  man  who  is  in  need.  And  so  once  more  the 
boy  and  his  examiner  seem  to  have  reached  an 
impasse. 

Now,  a  plain  unimaginative  man  like  Grote 
will  see  little  profit  in  this  sort  of  word-play  be- 
yond its  tendency  to  shake  the  ignorant  out  of 
their  confidence ;  and  there  is  that  in  this  first  part 
of  the  Dialogue — and  something  more.  It  is  an 
admirable  example  of  the  superficial  sophistry  to 
which  Plato  sometimes  descends,  whether  wit- 
tingly or  unwittingly,  while  the  conclusion  he  has 
in  view  is  perfectly  sound.  The  fallacy  lies  in 
the  ambiguous  use  of  such  words  as  "fair"  and 
"good,"   which   retain   their   practical    popular 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  85 

meaning  as  applied  to  the  specific  acts  of  men, 
while  they  include  also  hints  and  admonitions  of 
a  deeper  sense  as  touching  the  purpose  imderly- 
ing  any  specific  act.  All  temperance  is  good? 
Yes.  Then  it  follows,  if  goodness  is  such  a  thing, 
simple  and  invisible,  as  it  is  becoming  in  Plato's 
rational  system,  that  all  good  is  temperance,  and 
all  good  is  bravery,  and  so  with  the  other  specific 
virtues.  In  a  word  there  is  only  one  morality, 
into  which  all  the  virtues  are  merged  indistin- 
guishably,  and  any  attempt  to  define  or  apply  a 
specific  virtue  will  result  in  confusions  and  con- 
tradictions. But  then  virtue  that  cannot  be  de- 
fined or  applied  is  rather  an  aerial  commodity  for 
this  workaday  world;  and  so,  where  are  we?  Of 
course  Charmides  might  have  retorted  that  he 
was  employing  the  word  "good"  in  one  sense  and 
his  interlocutor  in  another;  but  this  would  have 
demanded  a  power  of  analysis  quite  beyond  his 
years — a  power,  in  fact,  which  his  literary  creator 
had  not  yet  attained,  or  which  he  most  artfully 
concealed. 

At  this  point  the  argument  of  the  Charmides 
takes  another  turn.  At  the  secret  suggestion  of 
his  cousin  the  lad  asks  Socrates  what  he  has  to 
say  of  this  definition:  "Temperance  is  doing 
one's  own  business"?  That  sounds  well;  but  it 
does  not  take  Socrates  long  to  bring  out  its  in- 
adequacy, for  how  can  doing  one's  own  business 
be  temperance  until  a  man  first  decides  whether 


86  PLATONISM 

what  he  is  doing  is  beneficial  or  the  contrary?  He 
might  be  doing  himself  an  injury  while  thinking 
a  certain  act  was  his  business,  and,  manifestly,  it 
cannot  be  acting  temperately  to  do  oneself  an 
injury.  Before  a  man  can  be  temperate,  there- 
fore, he  must  know  himself  and  his  business. 
Here  Critias  takes  up  the  challenge,  and  avers 
that  temperance  is  just  the  sort  of  knowledge  im- 
plied in  Socrates'  queries:  it  is  self-knowledge. 
Moreover,  he  has  a  divine  sanction  for  this  defi- 
nition, and  from  a  source  that  must  appeal 
strongly  to  Socrates ;  for  the  God  of  Delphi  who 
meets  the  worshipper  at  the  threshold  of  the 
temple  with  the  inscription  "Know  thyself"  is 
not  issuing  a  command,  but  pronouncing  a  salu- 
tation after  the  manner  of  our  "Hail,"  "Be  well," 
and  to  be  well  is  the  same  as  to  be  temperate.  By 
his  manner  of  salutation,  therefore,  the  God  is 
instructing  us  that  to  know  oneself  and  to  be 
well  and  to  be  temperate  are  all  one  and  the  same 
virtue.  Thus,  by  an  easy  transition,  we  have  the 
argument  slipping  from  the  question  whether  the 
virtues  are  all  one  to  the  question  whether  virtue, 
this  particular  virtue  of  temperance  at  least,  is 
not  identical  with  knowledge.  Critias,  in  asso- 
ciating virtue  with  self-knowledge,  might  seem  to 
have  reached  the  goal  of  the  quest,  but  he  is  soon 
thrown  by  Socrates  into  embarrassment  because 
he  is  unable  to  analyse  the  ambiguity  lurking  in 
the  word  "knowledge"  similar  to  that  which  en- 
tangled Charmides  in  the  use  of  the  "good." 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  37 

Under  the  cross-questioning  of  Socrates  this 
knowledge  which  Critias  identifies  with  temper- 
ance proves  to  be,  not  the  knowledge  of  anything 
definite,  such  as  that  which  we  obtain  from  sight 
or  sound,  but  just  a  knowledge  of  knowledge  and 
of  ignorance.  But  where  is  the  profit  in  this  in- 
substantial sort  of  knowledge?  How,  for  in- 
stance, shall  the  possessor  of  this  knowledge  be 
able  to  distinguish  the  pretender  in  medicine  from 
the  true  physician?  To  do  this  he  will  have  to 
know  some  of  the  marks  of  the  physician's  art, 
something  about  health  and  disease,  and  this  is  a 
very  different  sort  of  thing  from  the  knowledge 
of  knowledge,  whatever  that  may  mean.  And  so 
it  is  with  temperance;  if  we  define  this  virtue  as 
knowledge,  it  must  be  knowledge  of  some  specific 
way  of  profiting  ourselves,  and  not  that  mere 
empty  knowing  that  we  know  or  do  not  know. 

The  argument  is  all  a  tangle,  in  which  we  have 
become  involved  by  the  treacherous  words  "good- 
ness" and  "knowledge."  Yet  we  are  left  with  a 
hint  of  the  way  of  escape,  given  in  the  last  beauti- 
ful address  of  Socrates  to  the  youth  whose  virtue 
was  the  occasion  of  all  this  seeking  and  doubting: 
"I  would  advise  you  to  regard  me  as  a  babbling 
fellow  unable  to  reason  anything  out,  and  of 
yourself  to  believe  that,  as  you  are  more  temper- 
ate, so  you  are  happier." 

Simple  as  this  last  sentence  may  sound,  it  is 
pregnant  with  meaning.     After  the   fruitless 


88  PLATONISM 

arguing  forwards  and  backwards,  it  awakens  in 
us  the  sensation  of  one  who  has  been  long  wan- 
dering in  a  blind  labyrinth,  and  suddenly  comes 
upon  an  opening  in  the  wall  through  which  he 
descries  lying  before  him  a  clear  and  spacious 
garden.  So  strong  is  this  impression  that  we 
should  be  tempted  to  believe  Plato  had  written 
the  Dialogue  deliberately  as  a  puzzle,  having  in 
his  hand  all  the  while  the  clues  not  only  of  the 
Socratic  Quest  in  which  he  is  engaged,  but  of  the 
larger  Quest  that  is  to  follow,  were  it  not  for  the 
two  great  arguments  of  the  Protagoras  and  the 
Gorgias,  which  seem  to  come  after  the  Charmides 
and  its  group  in  time  and  to  represent  the  author 
as  still  searching. 

Much  of  the  Protagoras  is  like  the  debate  of 
the  earliest  Dialogues,  only  wider  in  dramatic 
scope.  The  sophist  who  gives  his  name  to  the 
piece  maintains  that  the  virtues  are  separate.  Be- 
ing separate,  they  cannot  be  embraced  imder  any 
single  category  such  as  knowledge,  yet  they  can, 
he  thinks,  be  imparted  by  instruction.  Socrates 
holds  that  they  are  all  a  form  of  knowledge,  and 
so  not  many  but  one;  and  as  they  are  identical 
with  knowledge,  he  would  like  to  believe  that 
they  are  teachable,  but  is  troubled  because  he  can 
find  no  teachers  from  whom  you  can  learn  them 
as  you  can  acquire  the  various  arts  from  prac- 
titioners. The  two  disputants  are  thus  complete- 
ly at  cross  purposes,  and  the  reader  is  likely  to 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  39 

be  vexed  at  their  apparent  stupidity  in  missing 
the  occasions  of  coming  to  agreement.  For  ex- 
ample, Protagoras  has  been  forced  to  admit  that 
three  of  the  virtues — justice,  holiness,  temper- 
ance— are  at  least  pretty  closely  akin,  being  all 
reducible  to  wisdom,  or  knowledge;  but  he  still 
clings  to  his  theory  that  the  fourth  virtue, 
bravery,  is  quite  apart  from  the  others.  Where- 
upon Socrates  proceeds  to  show  that  bravery 
too  can  be  reduced  to  knowledge;  since,  as  a 
virtue,  it  should  not  be  confused  with  the 
headlong  impulse  of  the  unthinking  animal, 
and  can  be  nothing  more  than  wisdom  regard- 
ing what  is  dangerous  and  what  is  not.  At 
this  point  Protagoras  takes  refuge  in  silence,  and 
the  discussion  comes  to  an  end.  Yet  how  easy, 
the  reader  is  likely  to  say  to  himself  with  some 
impatience,  it  would  have  been  for  Protagoras  to 
retort:  Very,  good,  my  dear  teaser;  no  doubt 
bravery  is  dependent  on  knowledge,  just  as  tem- 
perance and  holiness  are,  but  just  observe  your 
own  addition — "regarding  what  is  dangerous  and 
what  is  not" ;  it  is  this  very  regarding  that  makes 
the  virtues  different  applications  of  knowledge, 
and  so  not  one  but  separate.  The  retort  is  easy; 
yet  beware.  Unless  you  have  got  clearly  defined 
in  your  understanding  this  slippery  thing  called 
knowledge,  your  questioner  will  attack  you  from 
another  side,  and  you  will  fall  a  victim  to  his  cun- 
ning, as  Protagoras  had  already  fallen  in  trying 


40  PLATONISM 

to  explain  how  the  knowledge  of  virtue  is  im- 
parted in  instruction. 

So  far,  then,  we  seem  not  to  have  escaped  from 
the  labyrinth  of  the  group  of  Dialogues  in  which 
the  Charmides  is  included.  But  there  is  one  im- 
portant addition  to  be  noted.  This  you  may 
know,  said  Socrates  at  the  close  of  the  Charmides, 
that  you  will  be  happier  as  you  are  more  temper- 
ate. Now,  in  the  Protagoras  for  the  first  time, 
Plato  takes  up  this  further  identification  of  virtue 
and  knowledge  with  the  sum  of  pleasures  which, 
in  ordinary  language,  is  named  happiness.  We 
cannot  get  away  from  this  one  fact,  Socrates 
argues,  that  the  feeling  of  pleasure  is  in  itself 
good  and  that  pain  is  in  itself  bad ;  hence  we  seem 
to  have  here  a  sure  criterion  of  the  rightness  or 
wrongness  of  our  acts,  in  the  result — ^not,  of 
course,  the  immediate  consequence  but  the  final 
result — as  shown  by  the  balance  of  pleasure  and 
pain.  Virtue  is  reduced  to  a  pure  hedonism 
(from  hedone,  pleasure),  dependent  on  a  man's 
ability  to  calculate  and  weigh  his  sensations  pres- 
ent and  future.  If,  therefore,  men  are  to  be  per- 
suaded to  follow  justice  and  holiness  and  tem- 
perance, they  must  be  taught  that  such  a  course  of 
life  in  its  totality  imparts  more  pleasure  than  the 
contrary  course.  The  conclusion  may  be  given 
in  the  excellent  language  of  Bishop  Berkeley's 
use  of  this  argument  to  imdermine  the  logic  of 
those  who  make  hedonism  an  excuse  for  vice: 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  41 

"But  Socrates,  who  was  no  country  parson,  sus- 
pected your  men  of  pleasure  were  such  through 
ignorance  of  the  art  of  reckoning.  It  was  his 
opinion  (Plato  in  Protagoras)  that  rakes  cannot 
reckon.  And  that  for  want  of  this  skill  they 
make  wrong  judgments  about  pleasure,  on  the 
right  choice  of  which  their  happiness  depends. 
To  make  a  right  computation,  should  you  not 
consider  all  the  faculties  and  all  the  kinds  of 
pleasure,  taking  into  your  account  the  future  as 
well  as  the  present,  and  rating  them  all  accord- 
ing to  their  true  value?  And  all  these  points 
duly  considered,  will  not  Socrates  seem  to  have 
had  reason  on  his  side,  when  he  thought  ignor- 
ance made  rakes,  and  particularly  their  being 
ignorant  of  what  he  calls  the  science  of  more  and 
less,  greater  and  smaller,  equality  and  compari- 
son, that  is  to  say  of  the  art  of  computing?"^ 

Manifestly,  the  argument  has  reached  here  a 
certain  conclusion,  the  Socratic  Quest  has 
touched  the  goal.  Virtue  is  an  act  which  will  re- 
sult in  the  greater  sum  of  pleasure,  and  he  will  be 
the  virtiiniis  mar;  who  has  the  loiowledge  that 
enables  him  to  calculate  the  consequences  of  his 

nnndiipfj    and    sfrilcp   a    hnlnnpp   in    the   terms~or 

sensation.  Knowledge  has  been  defined  by  the 
content  of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  by  such  a  defi- 
nition  we  can  say  that  no  man  errs,  or  sins,  will- 
ingly, but  only  through  ignorance      This,  ap- 

*  Alciphron  II,  xviii,  abridged. 


4«  PLATONISM 

parently,  is  the  form  in  which  Socrates  held  his 
thesis,  and  it  has  maintained  its  position  in  the 
world  to  this  day ;  since  Bentham  formulated  the 
utilitarianism  of  the  eighteenth  century  it  may 
even  be  regarded  as  the  dominant  theory  of 
ethics,  however  it  may  have  disguised  itself  by 
various  additions  and  verbal  modifications.  And, 
in  a  way,  when  combined,  as  it  was  in  the  teach- 
ing of  Socrates,  with  another  truth  of  an  utterly 
different  order,  it  contains  a  kernel  of  truth.  But 
taken  alone  as  complete  in  itself,  as  it  is  professed 
by  the  utihtarian  and  as  it  was  expressed  in  the 
Protagoras,  it  certainly  is  inadequate,  if  not  false. 
What  assurance  is  there  that  any  man,  by  his 
own  judgment  or  even  by  the  collective  exper- 
ience of  society,  shall  be  able  at  any  critical  mo- 
ment to  foresee  the  long  series  of  consequences 
that  may  follow  a  particular  act,  or  shall  be  wise 
enough  to  determine  coldly,  amid  the  warm  solici- 
tations of  present  desire,  where  the  remote  bal- 
ance of  pleasure  and  pain  will  lie?  Such  a  calcu- 
lation is  but  a  fumbling  guide  at  best;  unless 
fortified  by  a  higher  truth  it  is  Hkely  to  bring  us, 
indeed  in  the  end  it  has  invariably  brought  men, 
to  the  Pyrrhonic  form  of  scepticism,  which 
thrusts  aside  the  uncertainties  of  the  far  future, 
and  seeks  for  tranquilHty  in  accepting  with  a 
kind  of  stoic  Epicureanism  the  pleasure  in  sight 
as  the  only  reaHty — 

"Ah,  take  the  cash,  and  let  the  credit  go." 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  43 

But  that  is  not  the  scepticism  of  Socrates,  nor  is 
this  the  goal  to  which  Plato's  mind  is  moving 
with  the  steady  sweep  of  tidal  waters  drawn  on- 
ward by  a  celestial  force.  What  is  this  thing 
called  pleasm'e  which  we  have  so  lightly  accepted 
as  the  sole  arbiter  of  life?  That  is  the  question 
agitated  in  the  Gorgias,  and  never  afterwards 
forgotten  by  Plato. 

By  a  roundabout  way  the  discussion  of  the 
Gorgias  is  brought  at  last  to  a  sharp  dispute  be- 
tween CaUicles,  on  the  one  part,  portrayed  as  a 
typical  demagogue  of  the  day,  a  man  interested 
superficially  in  philosophical  questions,  but  at 
heart  an  agnostic  and  egotist  seeking  for  a  hfe  of 
pleasure  through  power,  and,  on  the  other  part, 
Socrates,  represented  here  as  the  customary  iron- 
ist, but  with  new  resources  of  sarcasm  for  those 
who  try  to  humihate  him  and  of  stirring  appeal 
for  those  who  will  heed.  The  brief  for  pleasure, 
which  in  the  Protagoras  was  held  by  Socrates,  is 
now  put  into  the  mouth  of  Calhcles,  in  order  to 
demonstrate  its  insufficiency  when  carried  to  the 
logical  end,  while  Socrates,  as  usual,  is  made  the 
vehicle  of  Plato's  expanding  thought — von  Aen- 
derungen  zu  hoheren  Aenderungen. 

This  talk  about  temperance  and  righteousness, 
says  Callicles,  with  a  cynicism  that  reminds  us  of 
certain  latter-day  prophets,  is  all  humbug: 

"The  nobility  and  justice  of  nature,  as  I  now  4911  s 
tell  you  boldly,  is  really  this,  that  a  man  who 


44  PLATONISM 

would  live  rightly  should  permit  his  desires  to 
grow  to  the  uttermost  and  not  temper  them  by 
discipline;  and  when  they  have  thus  grown  he 
should  be  able  to  serve  them  by  reason  of  his  cour- 
age and  wisdom,  and  satisfy  any  longing  that 
may  arise.  But  this  is  impossible  for  the  mob. 
Hence,  for  shame,  they  conceal  their  own  im- 
potence by  blaming  such  men,  and  say  that  in- 
temperance is  a  dishonourable  thing,  as  I  declared 
before,  thus  reducing  the  better  natures  to 
slavery.  And,  being  incapable  of  satisfying  their 
longing  for  pleasure,  they  praise  temperance  and 
justice,  for  their  own  lack  of  manhood.  Suppose 
a  man  were  bom  the  son  of  a  king,  or  were  cap- 
able by  his  own  nature  of  making  himself  a  king 
or  tyrant  or  ruler,  what,  in  the  name  of  truth, 
would  be  worse  or  more  dishonourable  than  tem- 
perance or  justice  for  such  a  man — for  a  man,  I 
say,  who,  when  he  might  enjoy  the  good  things  of 
life  and  there  was  no  one  to  hinder,  should  bring 
in  the  common  opinion  and  reason  and  censure 
of  the  mob  as  a  master  over  himself?  And  would 
he  not  be  a  wretched  creature  if  he  were  so  sub- 
dued by  the  specious  honour  of  justice  and  tem- 
perance as  not  to  grant  advantages  to  his  friends 
over  his  enemies,  in  the  city  where  he  himself  was 
ruling?  No,  Socrates,  the  truth  is — and  you  pro- 
fess yourself  a  votary  of  the  truth — that  luxury 
and  intemperance  and  hberty,  these,  if  they  are 
supported,  are  virtue  and  happiness;  the  rest  is 
fopperies,  the  unnatural  conventions  of  society, 
idle  chatter." 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  46 

Very  good,  replies  Socrates,  we  have  got  down 
to  the  real  point  at  issue;  and  he  proceeds  to 
draw  inferences  from  this  definition  of  virtue  in 
a  way  that  causes  his  antagonist  to  squirm  with 
indignation.  If  pleasure  is  all,  and  there  is  no 
criterion  beyond  it,  what  should  hinder  a  man 
from  indulging  himself  in  practices  which  can 
scarcely  be  named,  which,  in  fact,  we  do  not  name 
today?  Nor  was  there  anything  unfair  in  so 
pressing  the  argument.  We  need  only  look  at 
the  actual  life  in  Athens,  or  in  the  Italian  cities 
of  the  Renaissance,  to  learn  that  it  is  perfectly 
possible  for  a  man  to  gratify  his  lowest  and  vilest 
desires  without  losing  that  sense  of  pleasure 
which  the  hedonist  makes  his  norm  of  conduct. 
These  grosser  pursuits  cannot  be  rejected  on  the 
ground  that  a  true  calculation,  so  long  as  it  con- 
fines itself  to  a  purely  quantitative  estimation  of 
pleasure  and  pain,  finds  them  in  the  end  on  the 
wrong  side  of  the  ledger.  Such  a  reckoning  may 
save  a  man  from  excess ;  it  will  not  teach  him  to 
renounce  any  pleasure  in  itself.  Callicles  is 
decent  enough  to  admit  that  some  pleasures  are 
in  themselves  better  than  others,  and  having  thus 
granted  the  existence  of  the  good,  or  the  honour- 
able, as  a  standard  outside  of  pleasures  by  which 
we  may  grade  them,  he  has  virtually  given  up  his 
case. 

It  is  at  this  point  that  Socrates  utters  his  ironi- 
cally exultant  cry,  "Joy!  joyl" — as  it  were  a  4991 


46  PLATONISM 

prophetic  note  of  triumph  over  the  hosts  of 
sophistry.  That  is  one  of  the  great  moments  of 
philosophy,  the  moment  when  we  pass  from  the 
Socratic  Quest  to  the  Platonic  Quest;  and  I 
never  read  the  exclamation  put  into  the  mouth  of 
Socrates,  but  I  think  of  the  shout  of  Achilles, 
when  he  came  from  his  tent  and  stood  by  the 
trench,  with  the  divine  splendour  radiating  about 
him.  The  real  battle  was  yet  to  come,  but  there 
was  terror  in  the  walls  of  Troy. 

"Seeing,  then,"  says  Socrates,  taking  up  the 
argument  formally,  "that  we  have  agreed  to- 
gether, you  and  I,  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
the  good  and  such  a  thing  as  the  pleasant,  and 
that  the  pleasant  is  not  the  same  as  the  good,  and 
that  each  is  acquired  by  a  certain  attention  and 
mode  of  action,  according  as  we  set  out  after  the 
pleasant  or  the  good — but  before  I  proceed,  tell 
me  whether  you  say  yes  or  no  to  all  this."  And 
Calhcles,  Hke  a  man  brought  to  bay,  says  yes. 
Whereupon  Socrates  returns  to  the  points  on 
which  they  had  differed,  and  now,  fortified  by  this 
concession  of  CaUicles,  pronounces  the  verdict 
and  throws  back  the  slurs  of  his  antagonist,  in  a 
way  that  has  never  failed  to  hearten  good  men 
against  the  slanders  and  insults  of  unscrupulous 
power: 

507b      "And  so,  CaUicles,  we  come  to  this  necessary 
conclusion,  that  the  temperate  man,  being,  as  we 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  47 

have  described  him,  just  and  brave  and  holy,  is 
entirely  good;  and  the  good  man  must  do  well 
and  honourably  whatever  he  does,  and  he  who  is 
doing  well  must  be  blessed  and  happy,  and  the 
bad  man  who  is  doing  ill  must  be  miserable.  .  .  . 
Well,  then,  either  this  argument  of  ours  must  be 
refuted,  that  men  are  made  happy  by  the  posses- 
sion of  temperance  and  justice,  and  miserable  by 
the  possession  of  evil,  or,  if  the  argument  is  true, 
we  must  regard  the  consequences.  .  .  .  We  must 
consider  whether  you  were  right  or  wrong  in  your 
abusive  taunts,  to  the  eflPect  that  I  am  unable  to 
defend  myself  or  any  of  my  friends  or  family,  or 
to  save  them  from  the  extremity  of  danger,  be- 
ing, like  an  outlaw,  at  the  mercy  of  any  one  who 
chooses  to  buffet  me  on  the  ear,  if  I  may  repeat 
your  insulting  words,  or  to  deprive  me  of  my 
property,  or  banish  from  the  city,  or,  worst  of 
all,  kill  me.  Such  a  state,  you  declare,  is  the  most 
shameful  a  man  can  be  in.  But  I  say,  as  I  have 
often  said,  and  there  is  no  reason  why  I  should 
not  say  it  again — I  say,  O  Callicles,  the  most 
shameful  thing  is  not  to  be  buffeted  on  the  ear 
unjustly,  nor  to  have  my  face  or  purse  cut;  but 
it  is  a  worse  thing  and  more  shameful  to  buffet 
me  and  slash  me  and  mine  unjustly,  and  to  rob 
and  abuse  my  body  or  my  house.  In  a  word,  to 
do  any  injustice  to  me  and  mine  is  a  worse  thing 
and  more  shameful  for  the  one  who  does  the  in- 
justice than  for  me  the  sufferer.  This  is  the 
truth  as  it  appeared  to  us  in  our  former  discus- 
sion, and  is  now  made  fast  and  bound,  if  I  may 
use  a  bold  metaphor,  in  proofs  of  iron  and  ada- 


48  PLATONISM 

mant.  So  at  least  it  should  seem;  unless  you,  or 
some  one  more  audacious  than  you,  should  suc- 
ceed in  arguing  fairly  against  what  I  am  now 
saying.  For  as  for  me,  my  word  is  always  the 
same:  that  I  do  not  know  how  these  things  are, 
but  that  of  all  the  men  I  have  ever  met,  as  now, 
no  one  has  been  able  to  say  otherwise  without 
making  himself  ridiculous." 

Thus,  after  taking  a  fall  out  of  one  adversary 
and  then  another,  Socrates  is  at  liberty  to  profess 
his  tremendous  affirmation  of  the  moral  hfe,  in 
a  tone  very  different  from  that  of  the  calculating- 
argument  employed  with  Protagoras.  But  ob- 
serve the  door  by  which  he  has  finally  slipped  into 
this  new  region.  Weigh  the  sentence  italicized 
above,  by  which  the  passage  has  been  made,  for 
it  is  the  keynote  of  Platonism,  the  despair  of  the 
petty  logician,  the  joy  of  the  initiated:  "He  who 
is  doing  well  must  be  blessed  and  happy,  and  the 
bad  man  who  is  doing  ill  must  be  miserable."^ 
Now  on  its  face  this  is  no  argument  at  all,  but  a 
bit  of  outrageous  sophistry  turning  on  the  am- 
biguity of  a  phrase.  To  do  well  in  Greek  means 
both  to  prosper^  be  fortunate,  and  to  act  right- 
eously, justly ^  Callicles  would  have  been  ready 
from  the  first  to  grant  that  to  do  well  in  the  sense 

'"Oo-rc  woXX^  dvayKi;  .  .  .  tov  8'  fv  irpaTTovra  fuiKapiov  tc 
KoX  ivSaifiova  civat,  tov  8k  vovrjpov  koI  KaKwi  trparrovra  a6\u>v. 

*  In  the  preceding  debate  with  Polus  the  argument 
(474c  ff)  had  taken  a  similar  turn  by  means  of  the 
ambiguity  of  the  word  kokov. 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  49 

of  being  fortunate  is  to  he  happy — ^naturally ;  but 
if  he  now  makes  no  objection  to  the  other  mean- 
ing, that  to  do  well  in  the  sense  of  acting  justly 
is  to  he  happy,  it  is  because  he  has  been  brow- 
beaten by  Socrates  into  a  state  of  submissiveness. 
To  understand  the  full  scope  of  this  silent  admis- 
sion we  must  briefly  recapitulate  the  argument. 

Callicles  had  begun  by  drawing  a  distinction 
between  nature  (physis)  and  tradition  (nomos). 
Nature  is  what  we  know  by  our  immediate  indi- 
vidual sense,  that  is  by  natural  feeling;  tradition 
is  what  we  have  not  learned  from  our  indi- 
vidual experience,  but  accept  as  the  opinion, 
or  common  sense,  of  mankind.  Nature,  he  con- 
tends, tells  us  that  happiness  depends  upon  the 
amount  of  pleasure  we  can  wring  out  of  life,  and 
not  upon  the  means  by  which  we  obtain  this 
pleasure;  therefore,  in  nature,  it  is  better  to  be 
unjust  than  to  be  just.  Against  this  precept  of 
nature  the  law  of  tradition,  or  common  sense,  that 
it  is  better  to  be  just  than  to  be  unjust,  has  no 
weight  for  any  one  who  is  cognizant  of  the  facts, 
since  it  is  merely  an  opinion  which  we  try  to  make 
prevail  with  others,  for  our  own  advantage  and 
not  at  all  for  theirs.  The  problem  of  philosophy, 
therefore,  unless  it  should  be  content  with  a 
brutal  form  of  hedonism,  was  to  confirm  the 
authority  of  the  popular  verdict,  and  to  prove 
that  it  is  true  also  in  nature."* 

'  For  this  contrast  of  nature  and  common  sense,  or  com- 
mon opinion,  see  Laws  659d,  889e,  et  passim. 


60  PLATONISM 

Socrates,  as  we  have  seen,  takes  hold  of  the 
distinction  thus  drawn,  and  so  entangles  Callicles 
in  his  logic  that  at  last  he  is  obhged  to  accede  to 
a  qualitative  difference  in  pleasures  and  to  a  cri- 
terion of  life  apart  from  them  and  above  them. 
So  far  the  discussion  is  perfectly  fair,  and  to  this 
extent  Calhcles  has  been  forced  by  sound  reason- 
ing to  admit  that  the  popular  common-sense 
opinion  is  also  true  by  the  test  of  his  own  feelings. 
We  do  know  for  a  fact  that  one  pleasure  is  bet- 
ter, in  the  sense  that  we  naturally  call  it  more 
just,  than  another.  But  the  next  step,  that  our 
happiness  depends  on  this  new  qualitative  cri- 
terion, rather  than  the  quantity  of  pleasure,  is  not 
argued  at  all;  it  is  merely  slipped  through  by  a 
verbal  ambiguity,  owing  to  the  bewilderment  into 
which  CalHcles  has  been  thrown.  The  phrase 
doing  "well  merges  together  the  two  standards  of 
nature  and  common  sense — ^to  be  happy  by  pros- 
pering is  a  thesis  of  nature,  whereas  to  be  happy 
by  acting  justly  is  a  thesis  of  common  sense — 
and,  however  it  was  with  Callicles,  Plato  should 
not  have  let  this  confusion  pass  without  com- 
ment. But  neither  here  nor  anywhere  else  in  the 
Dialogue  does  the  author  show  himself  aware  of 
the  fallacy.  Instead  of  bringing  evidence  to 
prove  that  the  common-sense  view  is  also  true  by 
the  experience  of  each  individual  man,  he  allows 
Socrates  to  maintain  his  position  by  the  mere  arm 
of  an  invincible  scepticism :    "So  at  least  it  should 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  61 

seem;  unless  you,  or  some  one  more  audacious 
than  you,  should  succeed  in  arguing  fairly 
against  what  I  am  now  saying.  For  as  for  me, 
my  word  is  always  the  same,  that  I  do  not  know 
how  these  things  are,  but  that  of  all  the  men  I 
have  ever  met,  as  now,  no  one  has  been  able  to  say 
otherwise  without  making  himself  ridiculous." 

It  is  something — a  great  thing,  no  doubt — ^to 
have  raised  the  common  opinion  of  mankind  to 
the  solemn  utterance  of  a  spiritual  affirmation, 
supported  by  the  powers  of  scepticism;  but  this 
is  still  not  philosophy,  however  it  may  be  the  basis 
of  philosophy.  Common  sense  may  be  right,  but 
so  long  as  it  cannot  tell  "how  these  things  are," 
cannot,  that  is,  give  an  account  of  itself  dialectic- 
ally,  it  is  open  to  attack  and  discomfiture.  Now, 
so  far  from  being  able  to  give  an  account  of  itself, 
common  sense  is  painfully  aware  of  its  unaided 
inability  to  square  its  verdict  with  the  visible  facts 
of  life,  and  is  continually  taking  refuge  in  the  ex- 
pected reversals  of  an  invisible  world  hereafter. 
It  declares  that  the  just  man  must  prosper  and 
be  happy,  and  in  this  declaration  it  never  wavers ; 
yet  it  beholds  everywhere  the  prizes  of  the  race 
going  to  the  strong  and  unscrupulous,  and  in  its 
distress  it  prays  to  God  for  vengeance  on  the 
wicked  and  for  help  to  the  righteous.  So  it  was 
not  only  in  Greece  but  the  world  over;  and  so  it 
is  today.  How  marvellously,  for  example,  the 
trust  and  despair  of  religion  were  combined  in 


62  PLATONISM 

the  Jewish  Psahns,  and  how  legitimately  our 
worship  has  adapted  those  outcries  to  its  sense  of 
present  defeat  and  future  victory,  any  one  may 
understand  by  reading  the  great  sermon  of  New- 
man on  the  Condition  of  the  Members  of  the 
Christian  Church. 

And  this  is  precisely  the  position  of  Plato  in 
the  Gorgias,  Beside  the  magnificent  profession 
of  Socrates  that  the  just  man  is  happy,  he  sets 
Callicles'  picture  of  the  just  man  as  he  may  be 
actually  seen  on  this  earth,  buffeted  and  scorned, 
unable  to  protect  himself  against  the  machina- 
tions of  evil ;  and,  beyond  the  quibble  of  a  phrase, 
Plato  has  no  positive  logic  to  prove  that  Socrates, 
in  this  point,  is  right.  Whether  conscious  or  not 
of  this  defect  in  the  argument,  he  turns  for  his 
vindication  from  philosophy  to  mythology,  flee- 
ing, like  the  Christian  Church,  to  faith  in  the 
power  of  another  world  to  make  good  the  dis- 
harmony of  this.  The  Dialogue  concludes  with 
an  accoimt  of  the  pagan  day  of  judgment,  when 
the  naked  soul  stands,  with  all  its  secrets  revealed, 
before  the  tribunal  of  Aeacus  and  Radamanthys 
and  Minos,  and,  as  these  pronounce,  is  sentenced 
to  reward  or  punishment.  "For  this,"  Socrates 
says,  "was  the  law  [nomos,  the  divine  ratification 
of  nomos  as  common  sense]  concerning  men  un- 
der Cronus,  and  is  now  and  always  among  the 
gods,  that  he  who  has  passed  through  this  hfe  in 
justice  and  holiness  goes  after  death  to  the  Isl- 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  68 

ands  of  the  Blessed,  there  to  dwell  in  perfect  hap- 
piness beyond  the  range  of  evil,  whereas  he  who 
has  lived  wickedly  and  atheistically  departs  to 
the  prison-house  of  vengeance  and  judgment." 

So  far  Plato  has  come  in  the  Quest:  he  has 
shown  that  the  popular  view  of  morality  has  the 
sanction  of  rehgion,  and  that,  if  only  the  myth 
of  future  retribution  be  true,  then  certainly  it  is 
better,  measured  by  the  ordinary  standard  of  hap- 
piness, to  be  just  than  to  be  unjust.  But  what  if 
the  myth  be  rejected?  The  effort  to  confirm  this 
verdict  philosophically,  by  an  argument  based  on 
the  immediate  knowledge  of  men,  here  and  now, 
will  be  the  task  of  The  Republic.  If  Plato  suc- 
ceeds in  reaching  this  goal,  then  the  ambiguity  of 
the  phrase  by  which  Callicles  in  the  Gorgias  was 
tricked  into  acquiescence  will  prove  to  contain  no 
fallacy,  but  the  truth  of  philosophy  as  it  is  ex- 
pressed by  the  instinctive  common  sense  of  man- 
kind. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  PLATONIC  QUEST 

The  Republic  is  the  richest  book  of  philosophy 
ever  yet  composed.  In  its  wide  scope  there  is 
scarcely  an  important  question  of  human  life 
that  is  not  touched  on;  ethics,  psychology,  meta- 
physics, science,  education,  art,  religion — every- 
thing is  here.  Impressed  by  this  diversity  of  in- 
terests, the  pedant  has  undertaken  to  analyse  the 
work  into  separate  treatises  written  at  different 
times ;  and  the  casual  reader,  in  his  bewilderment, 
is  likely  to  ask  himself  whether  the  whole  thing  is 
not  the  random  outpouring  of  a  powerful  but  il- 
logical brain,  the  creation,  perhaps,  of  a  poet  who 
has  taken  up  the  ungrateful  task  of  philosophiz- 
ing. Yet,  with  all  its  variety,  the  better  we  know 
the  Dialogue  the  more  strongly  we  feel  its  or- 
ganic unity;  and,  indeed,  the  thesis  that  never  for 
a  moment  is  lost  from  sight  through  all  the  diva- 
gations of  reason  and  fancy,  ought  to  be  clear 
enough  to  any  attentive  student.  It  is  pro- 
claimed by  the  author  categorically  more  than 
once,  notably  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  book, 
at  one  of  the  cardinal  points  of  the  argument, 
where  he  says  his  design  was  to  set  forth  the 

54 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  65 

various  forms  of  government,  with  the  corre- 
sponding characters  of  individual  men,  "in  order  544a 
that,  having  seen  all  these,  and  having  come  to  an 
agreement  about  the  best  man  and  the  worst,  we 
might  learn  whether  or  not  the  best  man  is  the 
most  happy  and  the  worst  man  the  most  miser- 
able." 

Words  could  not  state  more  plainly  than  these 
that  the  object  of  the  Dialogue  is  to  come  to  an 
imderstanding  about  that  affirmation  of  Socrates 
in  the  Gorgias  concerning  happiness  and  virtue, 
which  was  there  upheld  by  the  force  of  sarcasm 
and  ridicule,  but  is  now  to  be  confirmed  by  argu- 
ment and  by  illustration  of  a  positive  sort. 

Here  the  problem  arises  as  to  the  relation  of 
the  Platonic  Dialogues  to  one  another.  The  so- 
lution depends  primarily  on  the  time  of  composi- 
tion. If  these  works  which  we  have  considered  as 
forming  a  propaedeutic  to  The  Republic  are  com- 
paratively late  in  order,  following  at  least  the 
Phaedrus,  which  an  ancient  tradition  held  to  be 
the  earliest  of  all  the  Dialogues,  then  Plato,  of 
course,  was  merely  playing  a  part  in  them.  If, 
however,  they  are,  as  virtually  all  scholars  hold 
today,  the  unriper  products  of  his  genius,  then 
we  have  still  to  answer  the  question  whether  they 
display  the  candid  gropings  of  a  mind  attempt- 
ing to  pass  beyond  the  Socratic  Quest,  or  were 
written  purposely  as  a  preparation,  with  the  con- 
clusions of  The  Republic  already  in  view.    The 


56  PLATONISM 

decision  can  rest  only  on  subtle  inference  and  on 
comparison  with  the  procedure  of  other  writers. 
My  own  opinion  is  that  the  Charmides  (with  its 
companion  pieces)  and  the  Protagoras,  Gorgias, 
and  Republic  certainly  follow  one  another  in  this 
chronological  order.  But  I  cannot  believe  that 
they  were  all  planned  together  deliberately  as 
one  complete  design;  for  that  would  be  to  grant 
to  their  author  a  comprehensiveness  of  intellect 
and  a  power  of  artistic  restraint  almost  more 
than  human.  Nor  can  I  admit  that  they  are  to 
be  taken  as  purely  occasional  treatises  with  no 
continuous  argument ;  for  that  is  simply  to  write 
oneself  down  as  incapable  of  reading  philosophy. 
The  only  other  explanation  is  to  see  in  them  the 
inevitable  development  of  Plato's  thought,  and 
to  suppose  that  in  each  case  the  larger  theme  of 
the  Dialogue  to  succeed  was  floating  vaguely  be- 
fore him,  but  was  not  yet  worked  out  in  logical 
form.  And  this,  too,  is  the  most  interesting 
theory ;  for  I  doubt  if  literature  affords  any  other 
example  of  a  mind  circling  outwards  from  a 
single  central  impulse  with  quite  such  fateful 
regularity  of  pattern — and  when  we  have  fol- 
lowed these  broadening  rings  to  the  utmost  reach 
of  our  vision,  it  is  as  if  they  still  moved  onwards 
and  outwards  to  some  far-off  invisible  shore. 

The  first  book  of  The  Republic  is  frankly  an 
introduction,  in  which  Plato  recapitulates  the 
Quest  so  far  as  this  had  carried  him  hitherto. 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  67 

After  a  dramatic  exposition  of  the  mise  en  schne 
he  leads  Socrates  and  Polemarchus  into  a  genial 
debate  on  the  nature  of  justice,  very  much  as 
temperance  was  discussed  in  the  CharmideSj  and 
braveiy  and  holiness  and  friendship  in  the  other 
early  Dialogues ;  and  with  the  same  inconclusive 
result.  No  tenable  definition  of  justice  is 
reached,  but  the  inference  is  subtly  suggested 
that  in  some  way  justice  is  merely  one  form  of 
an  all-embracing  virtue,  and  that  this  master  vir- 
tue is  somehow  dependent  on  knowledge. 

At  this  point  the  amicable  conversation  is 
broken  by  the  sophist  Thrasymachus,  as  the 
gambolling  of  lambs  might  be  interrupted  by  the 
advent  of  a  wolf.  As  Callicles,  in  the  Gorgias, 
was  a  rougher  duplicate  of  Critias,  in  the  Charmi- 
deSj  so  the  present  antagonist  is  still  more  turbu- 
lent— a  veritable  devil's  advocate ;  and  to  the  end 
of  this  book  we  have  what  is  substantially  a  sum- 
mary of  the  main  dispute  of  the  Gorgias.  You 
two,  exclaims  Thrasymachus,  are  talking  silly 
nonsense  and  indulging  in  a  game  of  mutual  flat- 
tery. When  urged  by  Socrates  to  give  his  own 
definition  of  the  virtue,  he  asserts  insolently  that 
justice  is  the  interest  of  the  stronger,  and  nothing 
more ;  and  then,  shifting  the  words  to  their  popu- 
lar sense  and  calling  that  injustice  which  in  his 
view  of  life  is  really  justice,  he  repeats  the  cyn- 
ical theory  of  the  day,  which  we  have  already 
heard  from  Callicles,  and  now  in  this  latter  age 


68  PLATONISM 

are  hearing  proclaimed  as  a  novel  doctrine  by 
teachers  of  the  Nietzschean  type.  My  meaning, 
says  Thrasymachus,  will  be  clear  if  we  take  the 
extreme  case  of  so-called  injustice,  and  see  how 
happy  it  renders  a  man  in  contrast  with  the  mis- 
erable creatures  who  are  subject  to  him  and  obey 
the  slave-morality — ^the  injustice  of  the  tyrant 
who  brings  a  whole  city  under  his  will  and  is  able 
to  provide  for  himself  and  his  friends  whatever 
good  he  desires.  The  truth  of  what  I  say,  adds 
Thrasymachus,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  in  their 
heart  of  hearts  men  envy  and  eulogize  such  a 
character;  for  in  reality  people  give  hard  names 
to  injustice  not  because  they  condemn  the  thing 
itself  but  because  they  are  afraid  of  suffering  un- 
der it.  To  this  unreserved  glorification  of  power 
Socrates  has  no  difficulty  in  replying.  The  man 
who  holds  it  right  to  make  his  own  supremacy  the 
law  of  conduct  must  first  understand  what  his 
interest  is,  even  in  this  crude  form,  so  that  mere 
strength  is  not  sufficient  but  must  be  united  with 
some  sort  of  wisdom ;  and  as  soon  as  this  element 
of  wisdom  is  admitted,  all  kinds  of  considerations 
of  man's  higher  nature  force  themselves  upon  us 
and  make  the  identification  of  happiness  with 
sheer  power  unthinkable. 

The  conclusion  of  the  dispute  is  like  that  to 
which  Socrates  and  Callicles  came  in  the  Gorgias, 
only  with  this  important  difference:  in  the  pres- 
ent case  Socrates  admits  that  nothing  has  been 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  69 

finally  decided.  "The  discussion,"  he  says,  at  the 
end  of  the  book,  "has  brought  me  no  real  know- 
ledge; for  while  I  do  not  know  what  justice  in 
itself  is,  we  shall  scarcely  know  whether  it  hap- 
pens to  be  a  virtue  or  not,  and  whether  he  who 
possesses  it  is  happy  or  not  happy."  And  now, 
instead  of  cloaking  this  ignorance  in  the  mjrth  of 
a  judgment  to  come,  he  will  settle  down  with  his 
friends  to  lay  bare,  if  possible,  the  inmost  nature 
of  this  thing  they  call  justice,  and  to  discover  the 
source  of  their,  or  rather  his,  assurance  that  it  is 
better  to  be  just  than  imjust,  better  even,  if  needs 
be,  to  suffer  the  extremity  of  injustice  than  to  do 
injustice.  To  this  end  they  will  strip  justice  of 
all  the  honours  and  rewards  by  which  a  man  is 
lured  to  act  contrary  to  his  natural  desires,  and 
will  contrast  with  this  the  purest  injustice,  with- 
out any  of  the  penalties  imposed  upon  it  from 
without.  They  will  picture  to  themselves  a  man 
who  pursues  through  life  an  undeviating  course 
of  justice,  yet  who  shall  appear  to  others  to  be 
acting  unjustly;  and  by  his  side  they  will  set  up 
the  man  who,  like  the  owner  of  the  ring  of  in- 
visibility, is  able  to  satisfy  all  his  evil  propensi- 
ties without  detection.  Furthermore,  for  the  sake 
of  argument,  they  will  suppose  that  the  juggling 
pardon-sellers  actually  have  the  power  to  buy  off 
the  vengeance  of  the  gods,  so  that  by  the  sacrifice 
of  a  little  of  his  ill-gotten  gains  the  unjust  man 
can  be  assured  of  as  fair  a  prospect  after  death 


60  PLATONISM 

as  the  just  man.  Then  they  may  see  whether, 
imder  such  conditions  as  these,  the  just  man  is 
still  happy  and  the  imjust  man  imhappy.  If  this 
proves  to  be  the  case,  it  must  be  because  justice 
in  itself  brings  happiness  and  injustice  misery. 
The  novelty  of  such  a  procedure  they  fully  rec- 
ognize, for,  as  one  of  them  observes,  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  world,  so  far  as  the  records  go, 
there  never  has  been  an  attempt  to  denounce  in- 
justice and  praise  justice  as  they  are  in  the  soul, 
themselves  the  greatest  possible  evil  and  the 
greatest  possible  good,  even  if  they  are  hidden 
from  the  eyes  of  men  and  gods. 

How  shall  this  mystery  be  laid  bare,  and  who 
shall  read  the  writing  on  the  secret  scroll  of  the 
human  heart?  For  a  while  the  Uttle  band  of 
searchers  is  daunted  by  the  task;  and  then  So- 
crates thinks  of  a  device.  After  all,  the  State  is 
but  man  writ  large ;  if,  then,  we  are  balked  in  dis- 
covering what  we  seek  in  the  isolated  soul,  per- 
haps its  operation  will  be  traced  more  easily  in 
the  conduct  of  society.  And  so,  for  the  rest  of  the 
Dialogue,  the  working  of  justice  and  injustice  is 
regarded  alternately  as  displayed  in  the  individ- 
ual and  in  the  RepubHc. 

To  begin  with  the  larger  writing,  Socrates 
suggests  that  the  easiest  way  to  track  down  the 
virtues  of  a  city  or  State  (the  words  were  about 
synonjrmous  to  a  Greek)  will  be  to  follow  its 
progress  genetically  from  its  feeblest  beginnings 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  61 

to  its  consummation  as  seen  in  a  highly  developed 
civilization.  A  Httle  examination  shows  that  this 
advance  is  by  what  we  should  call  today  the  in- 
creasing division  of  labour,  or  by  what  was  sug- 
gested in  the  Cliarmides  as  the  source  of  the  vir- 
tue named  temperance,  that  is  by  the  practice  of 
each  man  doing  his  own  business.  Such  a  law 
must  not  be  limited  to  the  individual,  holding  the 
shoemaker  to  his  last  and  the  farmer  to  his 
plough,  but  must  permeate  the  organization  of 
society;  it  will  divide  the  people  as  a  whole  into 
separate  classes,  each  with  its  special  function  in 
the  common  life.  Three  great  tasks  the  State 
has :  to  govern  itself,  to  defend  itself,  and  to  noiu*- 
ish  itself;  and  to  these  vital  functions  will  cor- 
respond the  main  division  of  the  people  into  rul- 
ers and  soldiers  and  producers.  Then,  if  our 
principle  of  organization  is  soimd,  the  State  will 
possess  the  various  virtues  according  as  each  of 
these  classes  carries  out  its  proper  activity :  it  will 
be  wise  when  the  rulers  perform  their  duty  com- 
petently, brave  when  the  soldiers  defend  their 
fellow  citizens  under  the  guidance  of  the  rulers, 
temperate  when  the  labourers,  obeying  the  rulers 
and  protected  by  the  soldiers,  are  industrious  and 
productive.^     But  we  have  not  yet  found  the 

*  There  is  some  confusion  in  Plato's  conception  of  tem- 
perance as  given  in  The  Republic.  Thus,  at  482a,  it  is  re- 
garded, not  as  the  special  virtue  of  the  productive  class,  but 
as  extended  through  all  three  classes.    On  the  other  hand. 


62  PLATONISM 

fourth  of  the  cardinal  virtues,  the  most  important 
of  all,  justice.  As  there  is  no  separate  class  left 
this  virtue  must  somehow  be  spread  through  the 
whole  of  society.  What  else  can  it  be  but  that 
very  law  itself  of  doing  one's  own  business,  which 
is  the  efficient  cause  of  organization  and  the  force 
behind  the  specific  virtues? 

Now  if  the  virtues  of  the  single  man  are  analo- 
gous to  those  of  the  State,  it  must  be  because  the 
soul  itself  has  faculties  corresponding  in  their 
functions  with  the  three  classes  of  society.  Two 
such  faculties,  or  modes  of  the  soul's  activity,  are 
manifest  at  a  glance:  reason,  answering  to  the 
ruHng  class,  and  desire,  answering  to  the  pro- 
ductive, acquisitive  class.  And  the  specific  vir- 
tues of  these  faculties  name  themselves :  a  man  is 
wise  when  reason  governs  his  actions,  temperate 
when  his  appetites  are  under  subjection  to  rea- 
son. A  third  analogy  Socrates  finds  in  the  fac- 
ulty by  which  we  feel  anger,  indignation,  resent- 
ment, pride,  superiority — ^the  thymos^  as  it  is 
called  in  Greek  by  an  untranslatable  term.    This, 

such  passages  as  434c  and  435b  would  seem  to  be  mean- 
ingless unless  temperance  is  limited  to  the  productive  class. 
Only  by  this  restriction  of  temperance  to  the  lowest  ele- 
ment of  the  State  and  of  the  soul  can  it  be  separated  from 
justice.  So,  certainly,  Aristotle,  with  apparent  reference  to 
Plato,  understood  the  matter  {e.g.,  Topica  v,  6,  10).  The 
confusion  in  Plato  is  owing  to  his  occasional  failure  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  division  of  the  State  into  classes  and 
of  the  soul  into  faculties. 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  63 

it  should  be  observed,  was  not  what  we  mean  or 
think  we  understand  by  the  "will";  for  the  will, 
if  Plato  had  had  any  word  of  precisely  this  sig- 
nification, would  not  have  been  accepted  by  him 
as  a  separate  faculty  or  mode  of  activity.  He 
would  have  agreed  with  Hobbes  in  regarding  it 
as  "the  last  appetite  in  deliberating,"  and  would 
have  admitted  the  conclusive  statement  of  Jona- 
than Edwards,  to  the  effect  that  "a  man  never, 
in  any  instance,  wills  anything  contrary  to  his 
desires,  or  desires  anything  contrary  to  his  will, 
.  .  .  the  will  is  always  determined  by  the  strong- 
est motive."  The  thymos,  then,  is  the  seat  of  the 
personal  emotions  as  distinguished  from  physical 
desires.  It  is  at  once,  as  an  appetitive  faculty, 
akin  to  the  desires,  and  by  its  mental  character- 
istics close  to  the  reason;  it  lies  between  the  two, 
like  the  soldier  class  between  the  governors  and 
the  producers,  and  its  virtue  like  theirs  is  bravery, 
or  courage.^ 

*  The  psychology  of  Plato  for  its  purpose  is  sound  and 
effective,  and  he  was  within  his  rights  as  a  moralist  when 
he  threw  it  into  relief  by  the  great  metaphor  of  the  State. 
But  the  reader  of  The  Republic  should  be  warned  that 
Plato's  mental  procedure  was  the  reverse  of  his  rhetorical 
method,  and  that  his  psychology  really  preceded  his  so- 
ciology. The  division  of  the  State  into  classes  was  made 
not  so  much  for  itself  as  for  an  illustration  of  the  activities 
of  the  soul.  As  such  it  was  an  excellent  device  of  rhetoric, 
even  of  logic ;  but  Plato,  it  must  be  acknowledged,  sometimes 
overstepped  the  proper  limits  of  analogy.  He  did  not 
always  remember  that  the  State  is  a  collection  of  funda- 


64  PLATONISM 

And  so,  as  Socrates  says,  our  dream  is  com- 
pleted, and  by  a  fable,  for  which  we  may  thank 
the  gods,  we  have  been  guided  to  the  discovery  of 
justice  in  the  soul.  For  evidently  that  principle 
of  attending  to  one's  business  which  was  the  or- 
ganizing force  of  society  and  the  efficient  cause 
of  the  civic  virtues  is  a  shadowy  image  of  what 
443c  we  are  seeking.  In  very  truth  the  justice  of  a 
man  is  like  that  of  the  State,  save  for  this  im- 
portant difference,  that  it  is  not  concerned  with 
the  division  of  labour  in  outer  things,  but  with  the 
conduct  and  being  of  the  soul  itself.  It  is  the 
power  that  holds  the  several  elements  of  the  soul 
each  to  the  performance  of  its  pecuHar  duty, 
and  forbids  meddling.  By  it  a  man  first  brings 
order  into  his  own  nature,  becoming  one  with 
himself,  and  having  his  members  tempered  and 
harmonized  like  the  chords  of  a  lute  that  make 
one  music  of  many  notes.    And  then,  when  the 

mental  units,  and  not,  like  the  soul,  a  unit  with  various 
forms  of  activity.  There  are  in  the  State  rulers  and  pro- 
ducers, and  the  distinguishing  virtue  of  the  former  is  wis- 
dom, as  temperance  is  of  the  latter;  but  these  classes  are 
composed  of  individuals  each  of  whom  possesses  all  the 
faculties.  The  neglect  of  this  simple  fact  has  led  our  "di- 
vine" philosopher  now  and  then,  as  it  has  led  modern  socio- 
logists, into  strange  and  devious  imaginings.  His  most  ar- 
dent admirers  will  confess  that,  whereas  he  generally  shows 
a  profound  intimacy  with  the  intricacies  of  the  individual 
soul,  some  of  his  theories  of  the  State  have  a  remote  rela- 
tion to  the  realities  of  human  nature.  But  this  is  one  of  the 
subjects  which  must  be  left  for  another  time  and  another 
book. 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  65 

peace  of  his  inner  life  is  established  and  he  is 
master  of  himself,  he  will  proceed  to  act,  as  he 
has  occasion  to  act,  whether  in  a  matter  of  private 
business  or  pubHc  interest,  in  accordance  with  the 
law  of  justice  within  him,  calling  any  act  just 
which  preserves  the  balance  of  his  soul  and  co- 
operates with  it,  and  declining  as  unjust  anything 
that  would  contravene  and  mar  his  self-control. 

Justice,  in  a  word,  might  by  its  very  definition 
be  taken  to  denote  the  happier  condition  of  the 
soul  in  precisely  the  same  way  as  health  of  body  is 
more  desirable  than  disease.  But  a  definition 
does  not  necessarily  force  conviction,  and  all  that 
logic  can  do — though  its  importance  in  this  re- 
spect must  not  be  underestimated — is  to  clear 
away  from  before  our  eyes  the  obstacles  thrown 
up  by  false  reasoning,  and  then  to  bid  us  look  at 
the  truth  as  it  stands  naked  and  revealed.  In  the 
end  the  success  of  any  moral  appeal  depends  on 
the  consent  of  the  soul  itself;  for  of  what  avail, 
as  Socrates  asked,  are  argument  and  definition  corgias  4721 
unless  the  hearer  in  his  very  heart  bears  testimony 
to  them?  And  there's  the  rub.  Our  life  is  woven 
of  endlessly  changing  emotions,  and  few  of  us 
are  capable  of  distinguishing  the  permanent  from 
the  transient  effects  of  our  acts,  and  of  disentan- 
gling the  threads  of  experience  so  as  to  say  that 
we  feel  thus  now  because  we  then  did  so.  To 
draw  proper  conclusions  we  need  the  help  of  one 
who  is  able  to  throw  such  a  light  into  the  soul  and 


66  PLATONISM 

character  of  a  man  as  shall  make  us  see  clearly 
into  those  dark  places.  The  philosopher,  there- 
fore, who  is  concerned  with  something  besides 
verbal  trimnphs  has  no  other  recourse  than  to 
turn  to  the  power  of  the  imagination;  and  so 
Plato  will  devote  the  eighth  and  ninth  books  of 
his  Dialogue  to  unfolding  such  a  "counterfeit 
presentment"  of  the  various  forms  of  government 
and  of  the  corresponding  characters  as  shall 
compel  the  most  reluctant  reader  to  say:  This  is 
the  very  truth  of  things  as  I  myself  have  seen 
it— 

"O  Hamlet,  speak  no  more; 
Thou  turn'st  mine  eyes  into  my  very  soul." 

The  method  of  portraiture  will  be  a  union  of 
history  and  psychology.  It  will  undertake  to  ex- 
hibit the  cities  of  Greece  actually  passing  from 
one  form  of  government  to  another — from  aris- 
tocracy to  timocracy,  and  from  that  to  oligarchy 
and  democracy,  and  last  to  that  tyranny  which 
was  the  perpetual  menace  of  these  small  and  fac- 
tious States,  and  which  was  to  close  with  the 
despotism  of  Alexander  and  the  more  enduring 
domination  of  Rome.  And  at  the  same  time  it 
will  set  forth  the  traits  of  himian  nature  which 
lie  behind  these  political  changes  as  their  cause 
Republic  544D  aud  material ;  "for  States  are  not  things  of  stock 
or  stone,  but  depend  on  the  character  of  the  men 
in  them,  which  drags  all  else  with  it  whatever 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  67 

way  it  inclines."  Plato,  writing  when  the  forces 
of  his  people  were  at  ebb,  gave  only  the  descend- 
ing scale  of  governments,  so  that  his  picture  to 
be  complete  would  need  to  be  balanced  by  a  cor- 
responding study  of  the  ascending  scale.  It  may 
be  objected  also  that  events  in  this  world  are  not 
so  regular  in  their  progress  as  he  has  made  them 
appear;  yet  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  his  gen- 
eralizations from  the  short  and  confused  annals 
of  Greece  are  in  the  main  quite  amazingly  con- 
firmed by  the  larger  sweep  of  history,  and  it  is 
still  more  sadly  true  that  a  reflecting  man  can 
scarcely  turn  from  Plato's  account  of  the  weak- 
nesses inherent  in  the  nature  of  democracy  with- 
out a  shudder  of  apprehension.  To  take  from 
Plato's  broadly  composed  narrative  a  few  sen- 
tences indicating  the  cardinal  points  of  what 
might  be  entitled  the  Tyrant's  Progress  must 
necessarily  deprive  the  picture  of  its  symmetry 
and  its  power  of  persuasion,  but  that  is  one  of 
the  disabilities  we  have  to  face  in  our  attempt  to 
dissect  what  is  a  living  body  of  thought  and  no 
dead  logic.  The  Dialogue  itself  remains  un- 
touched for  those  who  will  read  it.  Now  the  just 
man  in  Plato's  scheme  is  the  aristocrat,  he  who 
has  his  centre  of  action  in  the  reason,  which  is  the 
best  part  of  the  soul.  Such  a  man  may  find  him- 
self in  a  society  governed  by  quite  other  ideals 
than  his  own,  a  city  where  contention  is  rife  and 
the  ambition  to  prevail  over  others  is  stronger 


68  PLATONISM 

than  the  determination  to  rule  over  oneself.  He 
will  indeed  live  at  peace  with  his  own  soul,  content 
to  serve  the  State  as  best  he  can  for  the  unseen 
rewards  of  justice.  But  the  son,  unless  by  some 
divine  chance  he  inherit  his  father's  strength  of 
character,  will  probably  be  moved  by  different 
considerations.  The  mother,  perhaps,  will  feel 
herself  humiliated  because  her  husband  is  not  dis- 
tinguished among  the  magistrates  of  the  city,  but 
lives  in  quiet  contempt  of  the  brawling  courts 
and  contentious  assemblies,  with,  it  may  be,  the 
appearance  of  indifference  to  her  own  feuds  and 
vanities.  She  will  inveigh  against  this  philo- 
sophical life  to  her  son,  and  the  friends  and  very 
servants  of  the  house  will  join  in  the  complaints, 
and  will  urge  the  boy  to  go  down  into  the  battle 
and  contend  with  the  world's  weapons  for  the 
prizes  that  his  talents  merit.  To  these  exhorta- 
tions will  be  added  the  force  of  many  examples 
and  the  voices  of  the  market  place,  all  telling  him 
that  those  who  mind  their  own  business  and  fol- 
low too  fine  a  sense  of  honour,  after  the  manner 
of  his  father,  are  no  better  than  simpletons — 

"Honour!  tut,  a  breath: 
There's  no  such  thing  in  nature ;  a  mere  term 
Invented  to  awe  fools." 

Thus  the  education  of  the  world  lays  hold  of  him, 
and  he  loses  his  best  guardian,  that  divine  gift  of 
philosophy  tempered  with  the  love  of  pure  beauty 


THE  SOCRATIC  QUEST  53 

ands  of  the  Blessed,  there  to  dwell  in  perfect  hap- 
piness beyond  the  range  of  evil,  whereas  he  who 
has  lived  wickedly  and  atheistically  departs  to 
the  prison-house  of  vengeance  and  judgment." 

So  far  Plato  has  come  in  the  Quest:  he  has 
shown  that  the  popular  view  of  morality  has  the 
sanction  of  religion,  and  that,  if  only  the  myth 
of  future  retribution  be  true,  then  certainly  it  is 
better,  measured  by  the  ordinary  standard  of  hap- 
piness, to  be  just  than  to  be  unjust.  But  what  if 
the  myth  be  rejected?  The  effort  to  confirm  this 
verdict  philosophically,  by  an  argument  based  on 
the  inmiediate  knowledge  of  men,  here  and  now, 
will  be  the  task  of  The  Republic.  If  Plato  suc- 
ceeds in  reaching  this  goal,  then  the  ambiguity  of 
the  phrase  by  which  Callicles  in  the  Gorgias  was 
tricked  into  acquiescence  will  prove  to  contain  no 
fallacy,  but  the  truth  of  philosophy  as  it  is  ex- 
pressed by  the  instinctive  common  sense  of  man- 
kind. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  PLATONIC  QUEST 

The  Republic  is  the  richest  book  of  philosophy 
ever  yet  composed.  In  its  wide  scope  there  is 
scarcely  an  important  question  of  human  life 
that  is  not  touched  on;  ethics,  psychology,  meta- 
physics, science,  education,  art,  religion — every- 
thing is  here.  Impressed  by  this  diversity  of  in- 
terests, the  pedant  has  undertaken  to  analyse  the 
work  into  separate  treatises  written  at  different 
times ;  and  the  casual  reader,  in  his  bewilderment, 
is  likely  to  ask  himself  whether  the  whole  thing  is 
not  the  random  outpouring  of  a  powerful  but  il- 
logical brain,  the  creation,  perhaps,  of  a  poet  who 
has  taken  up  the  ungrateful  task  of  philosophiz- 
ing. Yet,  with  all  its  variety,  the  better  we  know 
the  Dialogue  the  more  strongly  we  feel  its  or- 
ganic imity;  and,  indeed,  the  thesis  that  never  for 
a  moment  is  lost  from  sight  through  all  the  diva- 
gations of  reason  and  fancy,  ought  to  be  clear 
enough  to  any  attentive  student.  It  is  pro- 
claimed by  the  author  categorically  more  than 
once,  notably  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighth  book, 
at  one  of  the  cardinal  points  of  the  argument, 
where  he  says  his  design  was  to  set  forth  the 

54 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  65 

various  forms  of  government,  with  the  corre- 
sponding characters  of  individual  men,  "in  order  s44a 
that,  having  seen  all  these,  and  having  come  to  an 
agreement  about  the  best  man  and  the  worst,  we 
might  learn  whether  or  not  the  best  man  is  the 
most  happy  and  the  worst  man  the  most  miser- 
able." 

Words  could  not  state  more  plainly  than  these 
that  the  object  of  the  Dialogue  is  to  come  to  an 
understanding  about  that  affirmation  of  Socrates 
in  the  Gorgias  concerning  happiness  and  virtue, 
which  was  there  upheld  by  the  force  of  sarcasm 
and  ridicule,  but  is  now  to  be  confirmed  by  argu- 
ment and  by  illustration  of  a  positive  sort. 

Here  the  problem  arises  as  to  the  relation  of 
the  Platonic  Dialogues  to  one  another.  The  so- 
lution depends  primarily  on  the  time  of  composi- 
tion. If  these  works  which  we  have  considered  as 
forming  a  propaedeutic  to  The  Republic  are  com- 
paratively late  in  order,  following  at  least  the 
Phaedrus,  which  an  ancient  tradition  held  to  be 
the  earliest  of  all  the  Dialogues,  then  Plato,  of 
course,  was  merely  playing  a  part  in  them.  If, 
however,  they  are,  as  virtually  all  scholars  hold 
today,  the  unriper  products  of  his  genius,  then 
we  have  still  to  answer  the  question  whether  they 
display  the  candid  gropings  of  a  mind  attempt- 
ing to  pass  beyond  the  Socratic  Quest,  or  were 
written  purposely  as  a  preparation,  with  the  con- 
clusions of  The  Republic  already  in  view.    The 


56  PLATONISM 

decision  can  rest  only  on  subtle  inference  and  on 
comparison  with  the  procedure  of  other  writers. 
My  own  opinion  is  that  the  Charmides  (with  its 
companion  pieces)  and  the  Protagoras,  Gorgias, 
and  Republic  certainly  follow  one  another  in  this 
chronological  order.  But  I  cannot  believe  that 
they  were  all  planned  together  dehberately  as 
one  complete  design;  for  that  would  be  to  grant 
to  their  author  a  comprehensiveness  of  intellect 
and  a  power  of  artistic  restraint  almost  more 
than  human.  Nor  can  I  admit  that  they  are  to 
be  taken  as  purely  occasional  treatises  with  no 
continuous  argument ;  for  that  is  simply  to  write 
oneself  down  as  incapable  of  reading  philosophy. 
The  only  other  explanation  is  to  see  in  them  the 
inevitable  development  of  Plato's  thought,  and 
to  suppose  that  in  each  case  the  larger  theme  of 
the  Dialogue  to  succeed  was  floating  vaguely  be-  - 
fore  him,  but  was  not  yet  worked  out  in  logical 
form.  And  this,  too,  is  the  most  interesting 
theory ;  for  I  doubt  if  literature  affords  any  other 
example  of  a  mind  circling  outwards  from  a 
single  central  impulse  with  quite  such  fateful 
regularity  of  pattern — and  when  we  have  fol- 
lowed these  broadening  rings  to  the  utmost  reach 
of  our  vision,  it  is  as  if  they  still  moved  onwards 
and  outwards  to  some  far-off  invisible  shore. 

The  first  book  of  The  Republic  is  frankly  an 
introduction,  in  which  Plato  recapitulates  the 
Quest  so  far  as  this  had  carried  him  hitherto. 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  67 

After  a  dramatic  exposition  of  the  mise  en  scene 
he  leads  Socrates  and  Polemarchus  into  a  genial 
debate  on  the  nature  of  justice,  very  much  as 
temperance  was  discussed  in  the  Charmides,  and 
bravery  and  holiness  and  friendship  in  the  other 
early  Dialogues ;  and  with  the  same  inconclusive 
result.  No  tenable  definition  of  justice  is 
reached,  but  the  inference  is  subtly  suggested 
that  in  some  way  justice  is  merely  one  form  of 
an  all-embracing  virtue,  and  that  this  master  vir- 
tue is  somehow  dependent  on  knowledge. 

At  this  point  the  amicable  conversation  is 
broken  by  the  sophist  Thrasymachus,  as  the 
gambolling  of  lambs  might  be  interrupted  by  the 
advent  of  a  wolf.  As  Callicles,  in  the  Gorgias, 
was  a  rougher  duplicate  of  Critias,  in  the  Charmi- 
des,  so  the  present  antagonist  is  still  more  turbu- 
lent— a  veritable  devil's  advocate ;  and  to  the  end 
of  this  book  we  have  what  is  substantially  a  sum- 
mary of  the  main  dispute  of  the  Gorgias.  You 
two,  exclaims  Thrasymachus,  are  talking  silly 
nonsense  and  indulging  in  a  game  of  mutual  flat- 
tery. When  urged  by  Socrates  to  give  his  own 
definition  of  the  virtue,  he  asserts  insolently  that 
justice  is  the  interest  of  the  stronger,  and  nothing 
more ;  and  then,  shifting  the  words  to  their  popu- 
lar sense  and  calling  that  injustice  which  in  his 
view  of  life  is  really  justice,  he  repeats  the  cyn- 
ical theory  of  the  day,  which  we  have  already 
heard  from  Calhcles,  and  now  in  this  latter  age 


68  PLATONISM 

are  hearing  proclaimed  as  a  novel  doctrine  by 
teachers  of  the  Nietzschean  type.  My  meaning, 
says  Thi-asymachus,  will  be  clear  if  we  take  the 
extreme  case  of  so-called  injustice,  and  see  how 
happy  it  renders  a  man  in  contrast  with  the  mis- 
erable creatures  who  are  subject  to  him  and  obey 
the  slave-morality — the  injustice  of  the  tyrant 
who  brings  a  whole  city  imder  his  will  and  is  able 
to  provide  for  himself  and  his  friends  whatever 
good  he  desires.  The  truth  of  what  I  say,  adds 
Thrasymachus,  is  proved  by  the  fact  that  in  their 
heart  of  hearts  men  envy  and  eulogize  such  a 
character;  for  in  reahty  people  give  hard  names 
to  injustice  not  because  they  condemn  the  thing 
itself  but  because  they  are  afraid  of  suffering  un- 
der it.  To  this  unreserved  glorification  of  power 
Socrates  has  no  difficulty  in  replying.  The  man 
who  holds  it  right  to  make  his  own  supremacy  the 
law  of  conduct  must  first  understand  what  his 
interest  is,  even  in  this  crude  form,  so  that  mere 
strength  is  not  sufficient  but  must  be  united  with 
some  sort  of  wisdom ;  and  as  soon  as  this  element 
of  wisdom  is  admitted,  all  kinds  of  considerations 
of  man's  higher  nature  force  themselves  upon  us 
and  make  the  identification  of  happiness  with 
sheer  power  imthinkable. 

The  conclusion  of  the  dispute  is  like  that  to 
which  Socrates  and  Callicles  came  in  the  Gorgias, 
only  with  this  important  difference:  in  the  pres- 
ent case  Socrates  admits  that  nothing  has  been 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  69 

finally  decided.  "The  discussion,"  he  says,  at  the 
end  of  the  book,  "has  brought  me  no  real  know- 
ledge; for  while  I  do  not  know  what  justice  in 
itself  is,  we  shall  scarcely  know  whether  it  hap- 
pens to  be  a  virtue  or  not,  and  whether  he  who 
possesses  it  is  happy  or  not  happy."  And  now, 
instead  of  cloaking  this  ignorance  in  the  mjrth  of 
a  judgment  to  come,  he  will  settle  down  with  his 
friends  to  lay  bare,  if  possible,  the  inmost  nature 
of  this  thing  they  call  justice,  and  to  discover  the 
source  of  their,  or  rather  his,  assurance  that  it  is 
better  to  be  just  than  unjust,  better  even,  if  needs 
be,  to  suffer  the  extremity  of  injustice  than  to  do 
injustice.  To  this  end  they  will  strip  justice  of 
all  the  honours  and  rewards  by  which  a  man  is 
lured  to  act  contrary  to  his  natural  desires,  and 
will  contrast  with  this  the  purest  injustice,  with- 
out any  of  the  penalties  imposed  upon  it  from 
without.  They  will  picture  to  themselves  a  man 
who  pursues  through  life  an  undeviating  course 
of  justice,  yet  who  shall  appear  to  others  to  be 
acting  unjustly;  and  by  his  side  they  will  set  up 
the  man  who,  like  the  owner  of  the  ring  of  in- 
visibility, is  able  to  satisfy  all  his  evil  propensi- 
ties without  detection.  Furthermore,  for  the  sake 
of  argument,  they  will  suppose  that  the  juggling 
pardon-sellers  actually  have  the  power  to  buy  off 
the  vengeance  of  the  gods,  so  that  by  the  sacrifice 
of  a  little  of  his  ill-gotten  gains  the  unjust  man 
can  be  assured  of  as  fair  a  prospect  after  death 


60  PLATONISM 

as  the  just  man.  Then  they  may  see  whether, 
under  such  conditions  as  these,  the  just  man  is 
still  happy  and  the  unjust  man  unhappy.  If  this 
proves  to  be  the  case,  it  must  be  because  justice 
in  itself  brings  happiness  and  injustice  misery. 
The  novelty  of  such  a  procedure  they  fully  rec- 
ognize, for,  as  one  of  them  observes,  from  the  be- 
ginning of  the  world,  so  far  as  the  records  go, 
there  never  has  been  an  attempt  to  denounce  in- 
justice and  praise  justice  as  they  are  in  the  soul, 
themselves  the  greatest  possible  evil  and  the 
greatest  possible  good,  even  if  they  are  hidden 
from  the  eyes  of  men  and  gods. 

How  shall  this  mystery  be  laid  bare,  and  who 
shall  read  the  writing  on  the  secret  scroll  of  the 
human  heart?  For  a  while  the  Httle  band  of 
searchers  is  daunted  by  the  task;  and  then  So- 
crates thinks  of  a  device.  After  all,  the  State  is 
but  man  writ  large ;  if,  then,  we  are  balked  in  dis- 
covering what  we  seek  in  the  isolated  soul,  per- 
haps its  operation  will  be  traced  more  easily  in 
the  conduct  of  society.  And  so,  for  the  rest  of  the 
Dialogue,  the  working  of  justice  and  injustice  is 
regarded  alternately  as  displayed  in  the  individ- 
ual and  in  the  RepubHc. 

To  begin  with  the  larger  writing,  Socrates 
suggests  that  the  easiest  way  to  track  down  the 
virtues  of  a  city  or  State  (the  words  were  about 
synonymous  to  a  Greek)  will  be  to  follow  its 
progress  genetically  from  its  feeblest  beginnings 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  61 

to  its  consummation  as  seen  in  a  highly  developed 
civilization.  A  little  examination  shows  that  this 
advance  is  by  what  we  should  caU  today  the  in- 
creasing division  of  labour,  or  by  what  was  sug- 
gested in  the  Charmides  as  the  source  of  the  vir- 
tue named  temperance,  that  is  by  the  practice  of 
each  man  doing  his  own  business.  Such  a  law 
must  not  be  limited  to  the  individual,  holding  the 
shoemaker  to  his  last  and  the  farmer  to  his 
plough,  but  must  permeate  the  organization  of 
society;  it  vnll  divide  the  people  as  a  whole  into 
separate  classes,  each  with  its  special  function  in 
the  common  life.  Three  great  tasks  the  State 
has :  to  govern  itself,  to  defend  itself,  and  to  nour- 
ish itself;  and  to  these  vital  functions  will  cor- 
respond the  main  division  of  the  people  into  rul- 
ers and  soldiers  and  producers.  Then,  if  om* 
principle  of  organization  is  sound,  the  State  will 
possess  the  various  virtues  according  as  each  of 
these  classes  carries  out  its  proper  activity :  it  will 
be  wise  when  the  rulers  perform  their  duty  com- 
petently, brave  when  the  soldiers  defend  their 
fellow  citizens  imder  the  guidance  of  the  rulers, 
temperate  when  the  labourers,  obeying  the  rulers 
and  protected  by  the  soldiers,  are  industrious  and 
productive.^     But  we  have  not  yet  found  the 

^  There  is  some  confusion  in  Plato's  conception  of  tem- 
perance as  given  in  The  Republic.  Thus,  at  4d2A,  it  is  re- 
garded, not  as  the  special  virtue  of  the  productive  class,  but 
as  extended  through  all  three  classes.     On  the  other  hand. 


6t  PLATONISM 

fourth  of  the  cardinal  virtues,  the  most  important 
of  all,  justice.  As  there  is  no  separate  class  left 
this  virtue  must  somehow  be  spread  through  the 
whole  of  society.  What  else  can  it  be  but  that 
very  law  itself  of  doing  one's  own  business,  which 
is  the  efficient  cause  of  organization  and  the  force 
behind  the  specific  virtues? 

Now  if  the  virtues  of  the  single  man  are  analo- 
gous to  those  of  the  State,  it  must  be  because  the 
soul  itself  has  faculties  corresponding  in  their 
functions  with  the  three  classes  of  society.  Two 
such  faculties,  or  modes  of  the  soul's  activity,  are 
manifest  at  a  glance:  reason,  answering  to  the 
ruhng  class,  and  desire,  answering  to  the  pro- 
ductive, acquisitive  class.  And  the  specific  vir- 
tues of  these  faculties  name  themselves :  a  man  is 
wise  when  reason  governs  his  actions,  temperate 
when  his  appetites  are  under  subjection  to  rea- 
son. A  third  analogy  Socrates  finds  in  the  fac- 
ulty by  which  we  feel  anger,  indignation,  resent- 
ment, pride,  superiority — the  thymos,  as  it  is 
called  in  Greek  by  an  untranslatable  term.    This, 

such  passages  as  434c  and  435b  would  seem  to  be  mean- 
ingless unless  temperance  is  limited  to  the  productive  class. 
Only  by  this  restriction  of  temperance  to  the  lowest  ele- 
ment of  the  State  and  of  the  soul  can  it  be  separated  from 
justice.  So,  certainly,  Aristotle,  with  apparent  reference  to 
Plato,  understood  the  matter  {e.g.,  Topica  v,  6,  10).  The 
confusion  in  Plato  is  owing  to  his  occasional  failure  to  dis- 
tinguish between  the  division  of  the  State  into  classes  and 
of  the  soul  into  faculties. 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  68 

it  should  be  observed,  was  not  what  we  mean  or 
think  we  understand  by  the  "will";  for  the  will, 
if  Plato  had  had  any  word  of  precisely  this  sig- 
nification, would  not  have  been  accepted  by  him 
as  a  separate  faculty  or  mode  of  activity.  He 
would  have  agreed  with  Hobbes  in  regarding  it 
as  "the  last  appetite  in  deliberating,"  and  would 
have  admitted  the  conclusive  statement  of  Jona- 
than Edwards,  to  the  effect  that  "a  man  never, 
in  any  instance,  wills  anything  contrary  to  his 
desires,  or  desires  anything  contrary  to  his  will, 
.  .  .  the  will  is  always  determined  by  the  strong- 
est motive."  The  thymos,  then,  is  the  seat  of  the 
personal  emotions  as  distinguished  from  physical 
desires.  It  is  at  once,  as  an  appetitive  faculty, 
akin  to  the  desires,  and  by  its  mental  character- 
istics close  to  the  reason ;  it  lies  between  the  two, 
like  the  soldier  class  between  the  governors  and 
the  producers,  and  its  virtue  like  theirs  is  bravery, 
or  courage.^ 

^  The  psychology  of  Plato  for  its  purpose  is  sound  and 
effective,  and  he  was  within  his  rights  as  a  moralist  when 
he  threw  it  into  relief  by  the  great  metaphor  of  the  State. 
But  the  reader  of  The  Republic  should  be  warned  that 
Plato's  mental  procedure  was  the  reverse  of  his  rhetorical 
method,  and  that  his  psychology  really  preceded  his  so- 
ciology. The  division  of  the  State  into  classes  was  made 
not  so  much  for  itself  as  for  an  illustration  of  the  activities 
of  the  soul.  As  such  it  was  an  excellent  device  of  rhetoric, 
even  of  logic ;  but  Plato,  it  must  be  acknowledged,  sometimes 
overstepped  the  proper  limits  of  analogy.  He  did  not 
always  remember  that  the  State  is  a  collection  of  funda- 


64  PLATONISM 

And  so,  as  Socrates  says,  our  dream  is  com- 
pleted, and  by  a  fable,  for  which  we  may  thank 
the  gods,  we  have  been  guided  to  the  discovery  of 
justice  in  the  soul.  For  evidently  that  principle 
of  attending  to  one's  business  which  was  the  or- 
ganizing force  of  society  and  the  efficient  cause 
of  the  civic  virtues  is  a  shadowy  image  of  what 
443c  we  are  seeking.  In  very  truth  the  justice  of  a 
man  is  like  that  of  the  State,  save  for  this  im- 
portant difference,  that  it  is  not  concerned  with 
the  division  of  labour  in  outer  things,  but  with  the 
conduct  and  being  of  the  soul  itself.  It  is  the 
power  that  holds  the  several  elements  of  the  soul 
each  to  the  performance  of  its  peculiar  duty, 
and  forbids  meddling.  By  it  a  man  first  brings 
order  into  his  own  nature,  becoming  one  with 
himself,  and  having  his  members  tempered  and 
harmonized  like  the  chords  of  a  lute  that  make 
one  music  of  many  notes.    And  then,  when  the 

mental  units,  and  not,  like  the  soul,  a  unit  with  various 
forms  of  activity.  There  are  in  the  State  rulers  and  pro- 
ducers, and  the  distinguishing  virtue  of  the  former  is  wis- 
dom, as  temperance  is  of  the  latter;  but  these  classes  are 
composed  of  individuals  each  of  whom  possesses  all  the 
faculties.  The  neglect  of  this  simple  fact  has  led  our  "di- 
vine" philosopher  now  and  then,  as  it  has  led  modern  socio- 
logists, into  strange  and  devious  imaginings.  His  most  ar- 
dent admirers  will  confess  that,  whereas  he  generally  shows 
a  profound  intimacy  with  the  intricacies  of  the  individual 
soul,  some  of  his  theories  of  the  State  have  a  remote  rela- 
tion to  the  realities  of  human  nature.  But  this  is  one  of  the 
subjects  which  must  be  left  for  another  time  and  another 
book. 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  65 

peace  of  his  inner  life  is  established  and  he  is 
master  of  himself,  he  will  proceed  to  act,  as  he 
has  occasion  to  act,  whether  in  a  matter  of  private 
business  or  pubHc  interest,  in  accordance  with  the 
law  of  justice  within  him,  calling  any  act  just 
which  preserves  the  balance  of  his  soul  and  co- 
operates with  it,  and  declining  as  unjust  anything 
that  would  contravene  and  mar  his  self-control. 

Justice,  in  a  word,  might  by  its  very  definition 
be  taken  to  denote  the  happier  condition  of  the 
soul  in  precisely  the  same  way  as  health  of  body  is 
more  desirable  than  disease.  But  a  definition 
does  not  necessarily  force  conviction,  and  all  that 
logic  can  do — though  its  importance  in  this  re- 
spect must  not  be  underestimated — is  to  clear 
away  from  before  our  eyes  the  obstacles  thrown 
up  by  false  reasoning,  and  then  to  bid  us  look  at 
the  truth  as  it  stands  naked  and  revealed.  In  the 
end  the  success  of  any  moral  appeal  depends  on 
the  consent  of  the  soul  itself;  for  of  what  avail, 
as  Socrates  asked,  are  argument  and  definition  corgias  472b 
unless  the  hearer  in  his  very  heart  bears  testimony 
to  them?  And  there's  the  rub.  Our  life  is  woven 
of  endlessly  changing  emotions,  and  few  of  us 
are  capable  of  distinguishing  the  permanent  from 
the  transient  effects  of  our  acts,  and  of  disentan- 
gling the  threads  of  experience  so  as  to  say  that 
we  feel  thus  now  because  we  then  did  so.  To 
draw  proper  conclusions  we  need  the  help  of  one 
who  is  able  to  throw  such  a  light  into  the  soul  and 


86  PLATONISM 

character  of  a  man  as  shall  make  us  see  clearly 
into  those  dark  places.  The  philosopher,  there- 
fore, who  is  concerned  with  something  besides 
verbal  triumphs  has  no  other  recourse  than  to 
turn  to  the  power  of  the  imagination;  and  so 
Plato  will  devote  the  eighth  and  ninth  books  of 
his  Dialogue  to  unfolding  such  a  "counterfeit 
presentment"  of  the  various  forms  of  government 
and  of  the  corresponding  characters  as  shall 
compel  the  most  reluctant  reader  to  say :  This  is 
the  very  truth  of  things  as  I  myself  have  seen 
it— 

"O  Hamlet,  speak  no  more; 
Thou  turn'st  mine  eyes  into  my  very  soul." 

The  method  of  portraiture  will  be  a  union  of 
history  and  psychology.  It  will  undertake  to  ex- 
hibit the  cities  of  Greece  actually  passing  from 
one  form  of  government  to  another — from  aris- 
tocracy to  timocracy,  and  from  that  to  oligarchy 
and  democracy,  and  last  to  that  tyranny  which 
was  the  perpetual  menace  of  these  small  and  fac- 
tious States,  and  which  was  to  close  with  the 
despotism  of  Alexander  and  the  more  enduring 
domination  of  Rome.  And  at  the  same  time  it 
will  set  forth  the  traits  of  human  nature  which 
lie  behind  these  political  changes  as  their  cause 
Republic  544D  aud  material ;  "for  States  are  not  things  of  stock 
or  stone,  but  depend  on  the  character  of  the  men 
in  them,  which  drags  all  else  with  it  whatever 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  67 

way  it  inclines."  Plato,  writing  when  the  forces 
of  his  people  were  at  ebb,  gave  only  the  descend- 
ing scale  of  governments,  so  that  his  picture  to 
be  complete  would  need  to  be  balanced  by  a  cor- 
responding study  of  the  ascending  scale.  It  may 
be  objected  also  that  events  in  this  world  are  not 
so  regular  in  their  progress  as  he  has  made  them 
appear;  yet  it  is  none  the  less  true  that  his  gen- 
eralizations from  the  short  and  confused  annals 
of  Greece  are  in  the  main  quite  amazingly  con- 
firmed by  the  larger  sweep  of  history,  and  it  is 
still  more  sadly  true  that  a  reflecting  man  can 
scarcely  turn  from  Plato's  account  of  the  weak- 
nesses inherent  in  the  nature  of  democracy  with- 
out a  shudder  of  apprehension.  To  take  from 
Plato's  broadly  composed  narrative  a  few  sen- 
tences indicating  the  cardinal  points  of  what 
might  be  entitled  the  Tyrant's  Progress  must 
necessarily  deprive  the  picture  of  its  symmetry 
and  its  power  of  persuasion,  but  that  is  one  of 
the  disabilities  we  have  to  face  in  our  attempt  to 
dissect  what  is  a  living  body  of  thought  and  no 
dead  logic.  The  Dialogue  itself  remains  un- 
touched for  those  who  will  read  it.  Now  the  just 
man  in  Plato's  scheme  is  the  aristocrat,  he  who 
has  his  centre  of  action  in  the  reason,  which  is  the 
best  part  of  the  soul.  Such  a  man  may  find  him- 
self in  a  society  governed  by  quite  other  ideals 
than  his  own,  a  city  where  contention  is  rife  and 
the  ambition  to  prevail  over  others  is  stronger 


68  PLATONISM 

than  the  determination  to  rule  over  oneself.  He 
will  indeed  live  at  peace  with  his  own  soul,  content 
to  serve  the  State  as  best  he  can  for  the  unseen 
rewards  of  justice.  But  the  son,  unless  by  some 
divine  chance  he  inherit  his  father's  strength  of 
character,  will  probably  be  moved  by  different 
considerations.  The  mother,  perhaps,  will  feel 
herself  humiliated  because  her  husband  is  not  dis- 
tinguished among  the  magistrates  of  the  city,  but 
lives  in  quiet  contempt  of  the  brawling  courts 
and  contentious  assemblies,  with,  it  may  be,  the 
appearance  of  indifference  to  her  own  feuds  and 
vanities.  She  will  inveigh  against  this  philo- 
sophical life  to  her  son,  and  the  friends  and  very 
servants  of  the  house  will  join  in  the  complaints, 
and  will  urge  the  boy  to  go  down  into  the  battle 
and  contend  with  the  world's  weapons  for  the 
prizes  that  his  talents  merit.  To  these  exhorta- 
tions will  be  added  the  force  of  many  examples 
and  the  voices  of  the  market  place,  all  telhng  him 
that  those  who  mind  their  own  business  and  fol- 
low too  fine  a  sense  of  honour,  after  the  manner 
of  his  father,  are  no  better  than  simpletons — 

"Honour!  tut,  a  breath: 
There's  no  such  thing  in  nature ;  a  mere  term 
Invented  to  awe  fools." 

Thus  the  education  of  the  world  lays  hold  of  him, 
and  he  loses  his  best  guardian,  that  divine  gift  of 
philosophy  tempered  with  the  love  of  pure  beauty 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  69 

which  alone  dwelling  in  the  soul  is  able  to  pre- 
serve it  to  the  uttermost.  He  becomes  a  timocrat 
instead  of  an  aristocrat,  a  man  in  whom  the  glory 
of  success  and  the  name  of  authority  override  the 
simple  law  of  justice  and  of  intrinsic  honour.  He 
is  no  longer  ruled  by  reason,  but  by  undue  pre- 
dominance of  the  sort  of  pride  that  belongs  to  the 
thymoSj  or  spirited  faculty. 

To  understand  the  next  step  it  is  first  neces- 
sary to  note  that  by  oHgarchy  Plato  meant  what 
we  are  more  hkely  to  name  plutocracy,  that  is  to 
say,  "a  government  resting  on  the  valuation  of  ssoc 
property,  in  which  all  real  power  is  in  the  hands 
of  the  rich."  The  individual  character  corre- 
sponding to  this  kind  of  State  will  arise  when  the 
son  of  a  timocrat  sees  his  father  suddenly  mis- 
carry in  some  magnanimous  project,  striking 
against  the  prejudices  of  the  city  as  a  ship  fomi- 
ders  on  a  sunken  reef,  and  losing  both  reputation 
and  authority,  perhaps  even  life.  Then  the  son, 
observing  the  insecurity  of  such  a  public  career, 
will  turn  his  attention  to  the  more  tangible  ad- 
vantages of  money,  and  will  devote  his  energies 
to  the  amassing  of  wealth.  He  will  eject  reason 
and  pride  from  their  high  places,  and  on  the  va- 
cant throne  of  his  soul  will  seat  the  concupiscent 
and  covetous  element,  to  which  he  will  pay  hom- 
age as  if  it  were  the  Great  King  himself.  In  the 
ordinary  transactions  of  business  he  will  play  the 
game  so  as,  perhaps,  to  acquire  the  reputation  of 


70  PLATONISM 

honest  dealing — ^that,  indeed,  is  within  the  scope 
of  his  ambition — but  observe  him  when  he  has  got 
hold  of  some  trust  for  which  he  thinks  he  shall 
not  be  made  to  account,  and  you  will  see  the 
rapacity  of  his  nature.  He  may  appear  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world  a  very  respectable  sort  of  per- 
son, but  there  is  no  real  health  in  him,  nothing  of 
the  power  and  peace  of  a  soul  at  one  with  itself. 
At  the  best  his  is  but  a  sordid  life,  absorbed  in  the 
calculation  of  profit  and  loss,  in  which  there  is  lit- 
tle room  for  the  education  of  taste  or  for  the 
pursuit  of  pleasure  in  its  higher  forms.  The 
very  absence  of  finer  interests  will  permit  the 
grovelling  and  sensual  desires  to  gather  strength 
within  him,  and  these  will  be  kept  down  only  by 
the  one  masterful  desire  of  increasing  riches.  He 
will  be  at  war  with  himself,  although  the  prudent 
element  in  him  will  still  be  in  the  ascendant. 

From  such  a  state  the  transition  to  the  lower 
stage  of  democracy  is  clear  and  rapid.  Suppose 
the  son  of  one  of  these  money-getters  comes  into 
the  early  possession  of  wealth  without  the  disci- 
pline of  acquisition:  almost  certainly  he  will  be 
unsettled  by  vain  conceits  and  puffed  up  by  the 
flatteries  of  those  who  wish  to  prey  upon  him. 
He  will  be  taught  to  regard  modesty  as  merely 
simple;  to  ridicule  temperance  as  unmanly;  to 
despise  moderation  and  thrift  as  vulgar  and  il- 
liberal. Such  old-fashioned  traits  will  be  thrust 
rudely  out  of  doors,  and  into  their  place  will 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  71 

troop  all  those  passions  which  his  father  had  sup- 
pressed— insolence  and  anarchy  and  waste  and 
shamelessness — rushing  in  now  like  revellers 
flushed  with  drink  and  crowned  with  garlands. 
All  pleasures  and  desires  are  the  same  to  him 
without  distinction.  He  lives  from  day  to  day 
as  his  appetites  impel  him,  indulging  now  in  wine 
and  lewd  luxuries,  then  drinking  water  only  and 
dieting ;  going  in  now  for  physical  training,  then 
throwing  up  everything  for  a  spell  of  listless 
loafing ;  making  a  pretence  even  of  the  philo- 
sophical life,  or  throwing  himself  into  some  po- 
litical excitement,  or  trying  his  luck  in  some 
business  venture — Hving  always  without  law  or 
plan  or  purpose,  taking  license  for  liberty  and 
ceaseless  distraction  for  the  pursuit  of  happiness. 
He  is  not  one  man,  but  many,  the  fit  double  of 
the  democratic  city.* 

Last  of  all  comes  the  tyrannical  man,  by  an 
easy  change.  In  the  soul  of  each  of  us  there 
dwell  desires  that  are  innocent  and  desires  that 
are  harmful;  even  in  the  good  man  the  evil  pro- 
pensities are  not  extirpated,  but  only  held  in 
leash.  This  we  can  see  in  ourselves  when,  after 
some  imdue  indulgence  of  appetite,  we  fall  asleep 
and,  in  this  relaxation  of  reason  and  habit,  be- 

'  It  is  only  fair  to  add  that  by  democracy  Plato  meant  the 
license  of  equalitarianism ;  his  aristocratic  State  was  really 
a  democracy  governing  itself  by  respect  for  what  is  best  in 
human  nature. 


7«  PLATONISM 

come  the  sport  of  fantastic  and  lawless  visions. 
Then  sometimes,  in  our  dreams,  the  wild  beast 
within  us  goes  forth  boldly  to  slake  its  lust,  and 
there  is  no  crime,  no  shameful  act  of  incest  or 
violence  or  unnatural  passion,  which  it  may  not 
commit.  Exactly  like  this  is  the  condition  of  the 
tyrannical  man.  He  has  been  brought  up  in  a 
democratical  family  to  a  perfectly  unrestrained 
life,  which  the  flatterers  about  him  dignify  by 
the  name  of  liberty.  His  father  and  true  friends 
still  retain  some  moderation  and  balance  among 
the  desires  that  draw  the  heart  this  way  and  that, 
but  the  baser  sort  who  hang  upon  him  discover 
the  natural  bent  of  his  nature,  and  by  humouring 
this  raise  it  to  be  imdisputed  lord  of  the  household 
within  him,  as  it  were  a  huge  and  winged  drone 
in  the  hive,  maddening  him  with  a  kind  of  frenzy 
to  which  every  lesser  impulse  is  made  subordinate. 
Then  indeed  License  is  crowned  king,  and  sits  as 
the  disposer  of  his  soul.  What  he  desires,  whe- 
ther his  master-passion  be  for  money  or  women 
or  power,  he  will  have,  though  it  involve  the  sac- 
rifice of  every  other  emotion  or  necessitate  any 
crime  against  those  nearest  and  dearest  to  him. 
He  is  not  a  human  being,  but  a  ravenous  beast, 
or  resembles  a  true  man  only  as  a  man  may  seem 
to  act  in  those  hours  of  turbid  dreaming  when 
the  soul  is  swept  along  by  visions  of  abominable 
lust. 

Such  is  the  Tyrant's  Progress  as  it  is  drawn  in 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  78 

the  eighth  and  ninth  books  of  The  Republic, 
frightful  enough  in  this  brief  outhne,  ahnost  over- 
whehning  when  read  with  all  the  realistic  details 
painted  in  by  the  relentless  hand  of  the  artist. 
Question  may  arise  as  to  the  propriety  of  apply- 
ing the  names  "aristocracy,"  "democracy,"  and 
the  rest  to  the  different  stages  of  the  degenerating 
State,  and  indeed  the  whole  subject  of  Plato's 
sociology,  in  the  sense  of  those  terms,  must,  as  I 
have  said,  be  considered  by  itself.  But  of  the 
reality  of  these  various  conditions  in  the  hfe  of 
society  or  of  the  individual,  by  whatever  poUtical 
names  we  designate  them,  there  can  be  no  doubt 
at  aU.  To  take  the  two  limits,  with  which  we  are 
the  most  concerned,  as  was  Plato,  we  recognize 
immediately  the  man  whose  faculties  are  each,  so 
to  speak,  attending  to  its  own  business — ^the  man 
who  is  wise  by  the  due  exercise  of  reason,  temper- 
ate by  the  proper  control  of  his  appetites,  brave 
and  self-respecting  by  the  measured  activity  of 
the  thymos;  and  who  deals  with  the  world  as  he 
deals  with  himself.  And  we  know  equally  well 
the  flimsy  creature  who  is  tossed  about  from  one 
unstable  passion  to  another,  until  he  sinks  to  the 
still  lower  stage,  when  out  of  the  conflict  of  un- 
guarded desires  one  master-passion  arises,  like 
the  criminal  tyrant  in  a  lawless  State,  to  enslave 
the  man's  soul  and  drive  him  furiously  across  the 
rights  of  others. 

Well,  Plato  may  now  ask,  have  I  not  made  out 


74  PLATONISM 

the  case  for  Socrates?  No  one  can  look  at  these 
contrasted  portraits  of  the  aristocrat  and  the  ty- 
rant without  granting  their  veracity,  or  without 
saying  to  himself:  "Yes,  if  this  be  justice,  then 
the  just  man  is  in  his  own  nature  happy,  and,  if 
this  be  injustice,  then  the  unjust  man  is  in  his 
own  nature  miserable.  These  equations  corre- 
spond with  what  I  have  suspected  in  the  lives  of 
other  men,  and  with  what  is  the  certain  experi- 
ence of  my  own  life.  It  is  no  more  possible  to 
escape  these  conclusions  than  to  deny  that  phy- 
sical health  means  a  state  of  pleasurable  existence 
and  disease  means  pain."  This  is  the  last  and 
supreme  argumentum  ad  hominem:  It  is  better 
to  do  justice  simply  and  solely  because  you  are 
happier  so  doing  than  otherwise.* 

Do  we  seem  to  have  gone  a  long  way  round  to 
reach  at  the  last  what  was  all  the  while  near  at 
hand?  The  conclusion  is  a  commonplace,  or  to 
use  a  fitter  term,  it  is  the  common  sense  of  man- 
kind, defended  by  the  weapons  of  a  terrible  irony, 
confirmed  by  the  insight  of  the  man  who  perhaps 
saw  more  clearly  than  any  one  before  him  or  af- 
ter him  into  the  obscure  depths  of  the  human 
heart,  and  made  persuasive  by  the  art  of  a  mas- 
terly rhetorician.  But  there  is  this  remarkable 
fact  to  observe  about  a  true  commonplace  in  the 

*  Compare  the  last  proposition  of  Spinoza's  Ethics:  Beati- 
tudo  non  est  virtutis  praemium,  sed  ipsa  virtus;  nee  eadem 
gaudemus,  quia  libidines  coercemus,  sed  contra  quia  eadem 
gaudemus,  ideo  libidines  coercere  possumus. 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  76 

moral  order :  it  passes  current  in  the  mouths  of  all 
unsophisticated  men,  yet  if  you  question  them 
about  it  you  are  hkely  to  discover  that  they  can- 
not explain  its  meaning,  and  if  you  press  them 
closely  you  may  even  bring  them  to  deny  that  it 
has  any  meaning.  As  for  the  commonplace 
which  forms  the  goal  of  the  Platonic  Quest,  it 
not  only  has  these  features  of  other  common- 
places of  morality,  but  it  stands  at  the  bifurca- 
tion of  the  road  where  rehgion  and  philosophy 
part  company.  Religion,  though  like  philosophy 
it  is  really  based  on  the  Socratic  affirmation,  is 
yet  too  fearful  to  rest  on  this  truth  alone,  and 
will  seek  another  foundation  for  its  faith  in  some 
miraculous  event  of  history  or  in  some  revelation 
from  above.  So  St.  Paul  argued  to  the  Corinth- 
ians: 

"Now  if  Christ  be  preached  that  He  rose  from 
the  dead,  how  say  some  among  you  that  there  is 
no  resurrection  of  the  dead?" 

"And  if  Christ  be  not  risen,  then  is  our  preach- 
ing vain,  and  your  faith  is  also  vain." 

"If  in  this  life  only  we  have  hope  in  Christ,  we 
are  of  all  men  most  miserable."  ^ 

We  are  of  all  men  most  miserable — is  not  this 
the  very  reverse  of  what  Plato  thought  philo- 
sophy was  to  teach  when  he  set  forth  on  his  great 

•  I  Cor.  XV,  12,  14,  19. 


76  PLATONISM 

search  in  The  RepuhUc?^  I  have  not  in  mind  to 
speak  slightingly  of  the  Christian  faith,  or  of  any 
genuine  faith;  I  know  the  sources  of  reHgious 
conviction;  but  when  I  see  the  perplexity  into 
which  even  St.  Paul  could  be  thrown  by  the 
fear  of  losing  his  belief  in  a  particular  miraculous 
event,  I  appreciate  the  force  of  Plato's  boast  that 
he  alone,  with  his  master,  had  the  courage  to  rest 
his  faith  on  the  simple  common  sense  of  mankind. 
This  is  philosophy.  Having  expounded  the 
meaning  of  the  commonplace  that  it  is  better  to 
be  just  than  to  be  unjust,  and  having  thus  given 
authority  to  the  aflSrmation  of  the  spirit,  philo- 
sophy does  not  seek  for  extraneous  proofs  of  this 
truth,  but  proceeds  to  use  it  as  a  principle  for 
investigating  the  manifold  life  and  activities  of 
the  soul. 

In  the  Protagoras  we  reached  the  goal  of  the 
Socratic  Quest,  when  it  was  shown  that  the 
knowledge  identified  with  virtue  was  the  know- 
ledge needed  for  the  calculation  of  the  conse- 

"  With  St.  Paul's  religious  fear  of  scepticism  one  may 
compare  the  great  passage  of  the  Apology  (40c-41d)  in 
which  Socrates  states  his  philosophic  faith  as  confirmed  by 
the  daemonic  guide  and  undaunted  by  doubt:  "To  die  must 
be  one  of  two  things :  either  the  dead  are  as  nothing  and  have 
no  perception  or  feeling  whatsoever,  or  else,  as  many  be- 
lieve, there  is  a  change  and  migration  of  the  soul  from  this 
world  to  another.  ,  .  .  And  ye  too,  my  judges,  ought  to  be 
of  good  hope  towards  death,  being  persuaded  of  this  one 
truth  at  least,  that  no  evil  can  befall  a  good  man  either  in 
life  or  in  death." 


THE  PLATONIC  QUEST  77 

quences  of  any  act  in  the  terms  of  pleasure  and 
pain.  It  now  appears  that  the  Platonic  Quest 
has  also  brought  us  to  knowledge,  but  to  know- 
ledge of  a  different  order.  To  go  back  to  our 
starting-point  in  the  Charmides,  it  will  be  re- 
membered that  Critias  suggested  a  definition  of 
temperance,  there  the  typical  virtue,  as  the  do- 
ing of  one's  business.  To  this  suggestion  Socrates 
replied  that  the  endeavour  to  do  one's  own  busi- 
ness would  profit  a  man  little  unless  he  first  had 
some  knowledge  of  what  business  was  really  his 
own.  And  Critias,  accepting  the  challenge,  de- 
clared that  temperance,  or  any  other  virtue,  did 
presuppose  knowledge,  and  was,  indeed,  such 
knowledge  as  the  God  of  Delphi  implied  in  the 
words  "Know  thyself,"  with  which  he  greeted  his 
worshippers  in  place  of  the  ordinary  salutation 
among  men,  "Rejoice."  One  feels,  while  reading 
the  Charrmdes,  that  in  Plato's  eyes  Critias  had 
enounced  a  great  truth,  and  that  his  subsequent 
entanglement  by  Socrates  was  owing  to  his  in- 
ability to  defend  dialectically  a  sound  position  in- 
to which  he  had,  so  to  speak,  stumbled  blindly. 
And  now,  in  the  appeal  of  The  Republic  to  the 
inner  experience  of  the  hearer,  we  learn  at  last 
what  was  meant  by  connecting  morality  with  the 
Delphic  salutation.  The  knowledge  conmianded 
by  the  God  is  no  empty  "knowledge  of  know- 
ledge," as  it  became  to  Critias  under  the  fire  of 
Socrates'  questions,  but  receives  a  very  definite 


78  PLATONISM 

content.  To  know  myself  is  to  be  effectively  con- 
scious of  this  certain  fact,  that  I  am  happy  when 
I  act  morally,  and,  conversely,  that  I  am  acting 
morally  so  long  as  I  am  happy. 

This  knowledge  of  happiness  is  not  of  things 
futm'e,  nor  is  it,  like  the  knowledge  of  pleasure, 
dependent  for  its  authority  on  a  fallible  science 
of  calculation;  it  is  immediate  and  independent. 
Here,  evidently,  are  two  different  orders  of  know- 
ledge, on  both  of  which  our  conduct  is  based,  and 
Plato's  philosophy  has  yet  to  explain  the  para- 
doxical bond  between  the  knowledge  which  So- 
crates identified  with  virtue  and  the  knowledge  by 
which  we  confirm  our  spiritual  affirmation. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  SOCRATIC  PARADOX:     THE   DUALISM  OF 
PLATO 

The  conclusions  of  The  Republic,  it  will  be 
seen  at  a  glance,  are  reached  by  a  thoroughgoing 
dualism.  In  particular  the  criterion  of  happi- 
ness, whereon,  as  I  think,  the  whole  ethical  sys- 
tem of  Plato  finally  rests,  will  have  no  clear 
meaning  for  us  unless  we  see  how  it  came  to  be 
used  by  him  as  something  essentially  different  in 
kind  from  pleasure. 

In  the  Protagoras  we  heard  Socrates  arguing 
that,  whatever  else  may  be  open  to  doubt,  all 
pleasure  in  itself  is  certainly  good  and  all  pain 
evil.  If  on  any  occasion  a  man  seems  to  reject 
a  pleasure  as  evil,  this  is  only  because,  if  admitted, 
it  would  deprive  him  of  a  greater  pleasure  or  re- 
sult in  an  overbalance  of  pain.  Therefore  virtue 
is  a  science  of  mensuration  applied  to  pleasure 
and  pain ;  when  we  err  in  our  conduct  it  is  through 
lack  of  this  kind  of  knowledge,  and  the  common 
reproach  that  a  man  is  overcome  by  pleasure  is 
no  condemnation  of  pleasure  itself,  but  of  the 
man  who  is  in  a  state  of  ignorance  regarding  the 
most  important  matter  of  life. 

This  is  the  so-called  philosophy  of  hedonism, 

79 


80  PLATONISM 

or,  if  the  phrase  is  not  self -contradictory,  indi- 
viduaUstic  utihtarianism.  It  probably,  to  judge 
from  the  way  it  was  carried  out  in  the  Cyrenaic 
and  Epicurean  schools,  represents  a  genuine  as- 
pect of  the  Socratic  attempt  to  identify  virtue 
and  knowledge.  But  Plato,  as  we  have  seen, 
soon  passed  beyond  that  position,  if  indeed  he 
was  ever  really  satisfied  with  it.  In  the  Gorgias 
he  introduces  Socrates  as  forcing  his  opponents 
to  admit  a  seemingly  qualitative  difference  in 
pleasures,  and  in  so  doing  he  virtually  takes  the 
foundation  from  under  hedonism  as  a  self-suffi- 
cient scheme  of  ethics.  For  the  moment  you 
grant  a  choice  among  pleasures  not  determined 
by  the  scientific  mensuration  of  more  and  less, 
but  based  upon  a  qualitative  criterion  of  good 
and  bad,  you  are  far  along  on  the  path  towards 
admitting  a  criterion  which  is  outside  of  and 
above  pleasures  and  depends  upon  a  generic  dis- 
tinction between  all  pleasure  properly  so-called 
and  a  feehng  of  another  order. 

The  ruthlessness  with  which  Plato  at  first  ap- 
plies this  criterion  would  rather  indicate  that  it 
was  a  new  discovery  with  him  and  had  not  been 
in  his  mind  when  he  wrote  the  Protagoras.  Hav- 
ing perceived  that  pleasure,  so  far  from  affording 
the  final  measure  of  good,  might  even  be  contrary 
to  the  good,  he  seems  for  a  while  to  have  taken 
pleasure  in  denigrating  pleasure.  So,  in  the  Gor- 
gias, he  outruns  the  requirements  of  his  argu- 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  81 

merit  in  forcing  attention  upon  the  disgusting 
possibilities  of  a  hedonistic  standard.  Again,  in 
the  PhaedOj  he  recurs  more  definitely  to  the  64d  «. 
theme  of  the  Protagoras^  and  repudiates  its  con- 
clusions in  the  most  vehement  language.  What  are 
we  to  think,  he  asks,  of  those  who,  as  the  popular 
opinion  holds,  are  brave  because  they  are  afraid 
to  be  cowards,  casting  out  fear  by  fear,  or  of 
those  who  are  temperate  through  calculation  of 
future  pains,  masters  of  certain  pleasures  be- 
cause they  are  the  slaves  of  other  pleasures?  No, 
this  is  not  the  real  business  of  morality,  to  barter 
pleasures  for  pleasures  and  pains  against  pains, 
the  greater  and  the  less,  as  if  they  were  pieces 
of  money.  But  that  is  the  only  right  currency 
when  we  exchange  all  these  things  for  wisdom 
and  courage  and  justice,  all  these  pleasures  and 
pains  for  true  virtue.  Do  you  believe  for  a 
moment  that  the  philosopher  has  any  serious 
concern  for  these  baubles  that  we  call  pleas- 
ures? They  are  but  the  poor  affections  of  the 
body,  whereas  all  the  study  of  the  philosopher 
is  to  escape,  so  far  as  mortal  man  can  escape, 
from  the  body  and  its  obscure  interests  into 
the  world  of  Ideas  which  are  the  veritable  life 
of  the  soul.  The  very  intensity  of  a  pleasure 
may  be  a  hindrance  to  the  soul  in  her  labour  of 
purgation  and  her  search  for  the  truth,  since 
those  things  that  cause  us  to  feel  most  strongly 
are  apt  to  seem  clearest  to  us  and  truest,  and  so 


8t  PLATONISM 

the  keenest  emotions  may  be  those  that  bind  us 
most  closely  to  this  earth.  Every  pleasure  and 
every  pain  is,  as  it  were,  a  nail  that  clamps  the 
soul  to  the  body  and  makes  her  corporeal,  creat- 
ing the  opinion  that  those  things  are  true  which 
the  body  affirms,  and  preventing  the  soul  from 
passing  to  the  other  world  in  her  own  purity  and 
power.  This  is  the  tone,  too,  of  the  Meno,  though 
less  poetically  coloured,  and  of  parts  of  The  Re- 
public, and  appears  to  represent  Plato's  middle 
period  of  lyrical  revolt.  At  times  he  almost  ap- 
proaches the  paradoxical  enthusiasm  of  the  first 
Cynic,  who  used  to  avow  that  he  would  rather  go 
mad  than  feel  pleasure. 

But  this  unmitigated  asceticism  is  a  passing 
phase  of  Plato's  philosophy  and  does  not  repre- 
sent his  final  judgment  of  human  Hfe.  In  his 
later  years  he  was  to  settle  back  into  a  saner  at- 
titude towards  the  common-sense  view,  and  to 
recognize  that  pleasure  was  not  in  itself  necessar- 
ily an  evil,  but  mixed  with  good  and  bad,  and, 
properly  considered,  one  of  the  decisive  guides 
of  conduct.  Much  of  the  PMlehus  is  given  up  to 
a  dispassionate  analysis  of  pleasure  and  an  en- 
deavour to  determine  its  relation  to  knowledge  as 
the  highest  form  of  mortal  activity.  Still  later, 
in  the  Laws,  almost  as  if  in  a  spirit  of  recantation 
for  his  earlier  severity,  he  descends  from  his  high 
philosophical  scorn  to  discuss  the  quotidian  uses 
of  pleasure  and  pain  as  constituting  the  practical 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  88 

problem  of  education.  These  first  books  of  the 
Laws  are  so  frequently  disregarded  by  writers  on 
Platonism  that  it  will  be  worth  while  to  dwell  at 
some  length  on  their  expression  of  his  ripest  and 
mellowest  views. 

In  The  Republic  Plato  had  entered  upon  a  dis- 
cussion of  the  sort  of  education  suitable  for  a 
citizen  of  the  world,  but  had  been  turned  away 
from  this  topic  by  the  allurements  of  pure  philo- 
sophy. After  writing  this  Dialogue  he  went 
through  what  may  be  called  a  metaphysical 
period,  and  then,  in  his  closing  years,  as  life  be- 
gan to  look  less  solemn  to  him,  he  seems  to  have 
felt  doubts  of  the  availability  of  his  high  morality 
for  the  common  needs  of  mankind.  And  so  the 
talk  of  the  three  friends,  which  forms  the  matter 
of  his  last  work,  will  be  "the  temperate  play  of  Laws  essx 
old  men  amusing  themselves  in  regard  to  the 
laws."  Instead  of  a  debate  on  the  uncompromis- 
ing ideals  of  the  philosopher,  this  Dialogue  will 
deal  with  the  education  of  the  ordinary  citizen 
and  the  formation  of  a  practical  government. 

The  heart  of  the  whole  argument  is  in  this  no- 
table passage  of  the  first  book:  "We  should  con-  644d 
sider  that  each  of  us  as  a  living  creature  is  but  a 
divine  puppet,  whether  created  as  a  plaything  of 
the  gods  or  in  some  more  serious  mood.  Of  this 
we  are  not  certain,  but  we  know  that  the  feelings 
[of  pleasure  and  pain]  are  the  sinews,  or  cords, 
that  pull  us  in  various  directions."    Hence  the 


84  PLATONISM 

lawgiver  who  has  to  study  the  well-being  of  so- 
ciety cannot  afford  to  neglect  these  motives  of 
action;  rather,  his  first  object  will  be  to  get  them 
into  his  own  hands  so  as  to  be  able  to  form  and 
control  the  character  of  his  citizens : 

6S3A  "I  say,  therefore,  that  pleasure  and  pain  are  the 
original  perception  of  children,  and  these  are  the 
things  in  which  virtue  and  vice  first  come  to  the 
soul.  As  for  wisdom  and  settled  convictions  of 
truth,  fortunate  is  he  to  whom  they  come  even  in 
his  old  age,  and  he  is  the  perfect  man  who  pos- 
sesses them  with  all  their  blessings.  Now  the 
virtue  first  appearing  in  children  I  call  their  edu- 
cation. If  pleasure  and  liking,  pain  and  hatred, 
are  rightly  implanted  in  the  souls  of  those  who 
have  not  yet  learned  to  know  them  by  reason,  and 
if,  when  reason  is  added,  their  souls  are  in  accord 
with  it  as  to  the  fact  that  they  have  been  rightly 
trained  by  suitable  habits,  this  harmony  is  virtue 
in  its  completeness ;  but  the  part  of  virtue  that  has 
to  do  with  the  right  training  in  pleasures  and 
pains,  teaching  us  to  hate  what  we  ought  to  hate 
from  the  beginning  of  life  to  the  end,  and  to  love 
what  we  ought  to  love, — if  we  separate  this  part 
in  our  discourse  and  call  it  education,  we  shall  in 
my  opinion  be  using  the  right  name."^ 

The  point  to  remember,  then,  is  that  to  Plato's 
sober  thought  pleasure  was  not  in  itself  a  thing 

^  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  my  translation  of  this  difficult 
passage  is  correct  in  every  detail,  but  the  general  sense  of 
the  Greek  is  plain  enough. 


DUALISM   OF    PLATO  86 

undesirable,  nor  yet  in  any  way  negligible  (such 
a  belief  would  have  been  simply  inhuman),  but 
was  rather  the  most  important  matter  to  be  con- 
sidered in  education  from  the  earliest  years  of 
childhood.  The  health  of  the  soul  was  involved, 
he  thought,  in  the  acquisition  of  right  habits  of 
feeling.  At  the  same  time  it  is  clear  that  this 
healthy  but  unreasoning  state  of  virtue  ulti- 
mately was  dependent  upon  something  besides 
the  mere  difference  between  pleasure  and  pain; 
and,  in  fact,  all  through  the  first  books  of  the 
Laws  the  education  of  youth  is  placed  in  the 
hands  of  men  who  have  attained  "wisdom  and 
settled  convictions  of  truth,"  and  who  are  able  to 
mould  the  habits  of  their  pupils  by  the  authority 
of  "virtue  in  its  completeness."  The  wisdom  of 
these  guides  is  the  knowledge,  as  expressed  in  the 
conclusion  of  The  Republic,  that  as  we  act  mo- 
rally we  are  happy;  their  authority  is  in  the  fact 
that  this  feeling  of  happiness  is  of  itself  and  al- 
ways good,  whereas  pleasure  is  a  subordinate 
feeling,  to  be  controlled  finally  by  a  power  out- 
side of  itself.  In  other  words,  Plato  in  the  Laws 
has  reverted  from  his  temporary  rejection  of 
pleasure  as  intrinsically  a  snare  of  evil,  but  still 
adheres  to  his  belief  in  the  radical  diflPerence  be- 
tween pleasure  and  happiness,  pain  and  misery.'* 

*  I  am  fully  aware  of  the  ambiguity  of  "happiness"  as  a 
translation  of  Plato's  evSai/xovta,  but  no  better  term  seems  to 
be  available.     "Eudaemony"  is  not  English.     The  words 


86  PLATONISM 

This  most  fundamental  distinction  of  Plato's 
dualism  is  alluded  to  many  times  in  the  Dia- 
470k  logues,  notably,  and  apparently  first,  in  the  Gorg- 
ias,  where  Socrates,  to  the  amazement  of  his 
hearers,  will  not  admit  that  the  Great  King,  to 
whom  every  possible  pleasure  is  open  in  the  high- 
est degree,  is  happy  unless  he  is  also  just  and 
righteous.  In  The  Republic  the  same  theme  is 
taken  up  and  elaborated  in  the  strongest  conceiv- 
able terms.  For  the  sake  of  avoiding  any  mis- 
understanding two  extreme  types  are  isolated 
and  contrasted  one  with  the  other.  The  unjust 
man  is  to  possess  all  the  pleasures  and  so-called 
good  things  of  the  world,  with  unrestricted  power 
to  carry  out  his  desires  and  with  no  prospect  of 
coming  pain  to  mar  his  enjoyment.  Even  be- 
yond that,  he  is  to  have  also  the  reputation  of 
justice,  so  that  the  finer  pleasures  of  honour  shall 
fall  to  him  as  well  as  the  grosser  material  plea- 
sures. With  his  wealth  he  can  even,  as  people 
suppose,  make  himself  acceptable  to  the  gods  by 
the  magnificence  of  his  sacrifices.  On  the  other 
side  is  set  the  just  man,  in  his  noble  simplicity, 

"felicity"  and  "blessedness"  suggest  themselves,  but  are 
barred  out  by  their  association  with  a  future  life.  I  must 
beg  the  reader  to  divest  the  word  "happiness"  of  the  sense 
customarily  given  it  in  philosophy  as  meaning  no  more  than 
a  sum  of  pleasures,  and  to  accept  my  use  of  it  as  signifying 
a  feeling  different  in  kind  from  pleasure.  As  a  matter  of 
fact  this  deeper  meaning  is  often  unconsciously,  or  half- 
consciously,  conveyed  by  the  word  in  ordinary  speech. 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  87 

the  man  who,  as  Aeschylus  says,  wishes  to  be  and 
not  to  seem  good.  He  is  to  possess  his  justice 
alone,  without  even  the  reputation  of  it,  but,  be- 
ing the  best  of  men,  is  to  be  reputed  the  worst. 
Let  him  be  scourged  and  abused  and  cruelly  tor- 
tured ;  let  him  know  all  the  pains  of  existence  and 
none  of  the  pleasures,  with  no  hope  of  compensa- 
tion hereafter.  Would  Socrates  dare  to  affirm 
that  under  such  conditions  the  just  man  is  still 
the  happier  and  the  unjust  man  the  more  miser- 
able?   And  Socrates  does  not  waver. 

Nor  does  Plato  waver.  In  the  matter  of  lan- 
guage he  may  now  and  then  fall  into  apparent 
ambiguities;  for  it  must  be  remembered  always 
that  he  had  no  technical  terminology  at  his  com- 
mand, and  employed  words  pretty  much  as  they 
came  to  him.  We  should  not  therefore  be  sur- 
prised if  at  times,  when  the  philosophical  distinc- 
tion is  not  the  matter  uppermost  in  his  mind,  he 
fails  to  discriminate  sharply  between  the  words 
pleasure  (hedone)  and  happiness  (eudaimonia) , 
or  even  seems  to  take  the  latter  consciously,  in 
what  was  then,  as  now,  its  popular  use,  to  mean 
merely  pleasure  in  its  larger  and  more  stable  as- 
pect. There  is,  for  instance,  a  curious  passage  of 
the  Laws  in  which  he  begins  by  making  the  dis-  66oe  s. 
tinction  clearly,  as  he  had  done  in  the  Gorgias 
and  The  Republic,  and  then  draws  back  from  his 
position  as  if  alarmed  by  its  possible  conse- 
quences.   If,  he  says,  the  just  life  is  not  repre- 


88  PLATONISM 

sented  as  offering  also  the  greater  sum  of  plea- 
sure, and  we  force  upon  men  the  uncompromis- 
ing question  whether  he  is  the  happier  who  lives 
the  justest  life  or  he  who  lives  the  most  pleasur- 
able, why,  they  will  retort  upon  us  by  asking 
what  is  the  profit  to  your  just  man  from  his  ex- 
istence devoid  of  pleasure.  Somehow,  therefore, 
the  lawgiver  must  refrain  from  separating  the 
pleasurable  and  the  just.  He  will  say  that  we 
see  these  things  but  dimly,  and  so  they  appear 
differently  to  different  men,  just  things  appear- 
ing pleasant  to  the  just  man  and  unjust  things 
unpleasant,  but  contrariwise  to  the  unjust  man. 
Now  the  judgment  of  the  just  man  we  must  sup- 
pose to  be  more  valid  than  that  of  the  unjust  man, 
and  our  task  will  be  to  make  his  judgment  pre- 
vail as  a  criterion  of  pleasures.  Such  a  conclu- 
sion might  seem  to  carry  us  back  to  the  aban- 
doned position  of  the  Protagoras;  yet  even  here 
a  phrase  slips  in  which  shows  that  Plato  was 
merely  arguing  on  a  lower  plane  for  practical 
purposes.  This  belief  that  the  balance  of  plea- 
sure belongs  to  righteousness  is  perhaps  only  a 
663d  salutary  illusion,  he  says,  which  the  cunning  law- 
giver can  implant  in  the  minds  of  the  young,  sim- 
ilar to  the  myths  of  the  gods  with  which  religion 
is  bound  up  in  the  popular  creed.  Plato,  in  other 
words,  was  here  writing  for  practical  men  and 
making  his  appeal  to  the  ordinary  intelligence. 
He  saw  that  for  such  minds  it  would  be  useless, 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  89 

if  not  actually  prejudicial,  to  present  his  thesis 
in  the  absolute  terms  of  philosophy;  just  as  the 
preacher  today  who  is  engaged  in  the  cure  of  souls 
would  probably  succeed  only  in  rendering  relig- 
ion fantastic  or  repugnant  to  sober  people  of  the 
world  by  describing  the  agonies  of  a  martyr  at 
the  stake  and  trying  to  make  his  audience  realize 
that  it  is  possible  amid  such  torture  to  die  in  an 
ecstasy  of  happiness.  Such  a  preacher  would  be 
proclaiming  a  psychological  fact,  but  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  his  words  would  be  for  edification. 

So,  I  take  it,  there  is  a  certain  philosophical 
"economy"  here  and  there  in  the  language  of  the 
Laws;  possibly,  too,  Plato's  own  naked  convic- 
tion seemed  to  him  in  his  later  years,  not  less  true, 
but  less  urgent  for  the  common  need  of  mankind. 
However  that  be,  one  thing  is  indubitable:  he 
who  has  not  grasped  this  distinction  in  kind  be- 
tween happiness  and  pleasure  will  wander  in  the 
labyrinth  of  Plato's  Dialogues  with  no  clue  to 
guide  him.  He  may  admire  their  various  beauties 
and  their  infinite  riches,  but  they  will  be  to  him 
a  maze  without  ultimate  plan  or  exit. 

This  dualism  of  feeling,  as  I  have  said  before 
and  must  say  again,  is  the  great  discovery  of 
Plato;  its  vital  importance  is  proved  by  the 
course  of  philosophy  among  writers  of  the  mod- 
em world  who  have  forgotten  it  or  tried  in  one 
way  and  another  to  avoid  it.  Certainly  the  his- 
tory of  ethical  theory  ought  to  establish  one  fact 


90  PLATONISM 

incontestably :  no  doctrine  can  speak  with  the  per- 
emptory voice  of  truth  which  eschews  all  forms 
of  reward  and  penalty.  No  statement  of  a  cate- 
gorical imperative,  no  trust  in  an  innate  sense  of 
duty,  no  exhortation  to  the  love  of  God  or  of 
man,  will  avail  against  the  temptations  of  the 
world  unless  the  admonition  bears  with  it  the 
promise  of  satisfying  what  all  men  instinctively 
crave.  The  heart  of  man  naturally  demands 
pleasure  or  happiness,  and  will  not  forgo  its  de- 
mand.^ 

On  the  other  hand  those  who  have  understood 
this  trait  of  human  nature,  without  admitting, 
tacitly  it  may  be,  the  radical  dualism  of  pleasure 
and  happiness,  have  fallen  invariably  into  one  of 
two  difficulties:  either  they  have  sunk  into  a  de- 
grading form  of  Epicureanism,  or,  shunning  this 
error,  they  have  lost  themselves  in  the  pursuit  of 
elusive  shadows.  These  difficulties  are  abund- 
antly evident  in  the  development  of  English 
utilitarianism.  The  strength  of  Bentham's  sys- 
tem— and  it  had  undoubted  strength — lay  in  his 
steady  perception  of  the  relation  between  the 
practice  and  the  reward  of  virtue.  But  his  purely 
quantitative  standard  of  pleasures  left  out  of  the 
accoimt  too  large  a  part  of  human  nature  to  sat- 
isfy the  finer  minds  even  among  his  followers. 

'  Those  who  think  that  happiness  is  omitted  from  the 
Buddhist  scheme  of  salvation  have  strangely  misread  the 
books  or,  more  probably,  have  not  read  them  at  all. 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  91 

So  we  see  John  Stuart  Mill  endeavouring  to 
abide  by  the  half-truth  of  utilitarianism  while 
giving  to  it  a  colour  and  a  tone  which  should  raise 
it  out  of  the  sty.  "When  thus  attacked,"  he  says, 
"the  Epicureans  have  always  answered,  that  it 
is  not  they,  but  their  accusers,  who  represent 
human  nature  in  a  degrading  hght ;  since  the  ac- 
cusation supposes  human  beings  to  be  capable  of 
no  pleasures  except  those  of  which  swine  are 
capable.  ...  It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that 
utihtarian  writers  in  general  have  placed  the  su- 
periority of  mental  over  bodily  pleasures  chiefly 
in  the  greater  permanency,  safety,  imcostliness, 
&c.,  of  the  former — that  is,  in  their  circumstantial 
advantages  rather  than  in  their  intrinsic  nature. 
And  on  all  these  points  utihtarians  have  fully 
proved  their  case ;  but  they  might  have  taken  the 
other,  and,  as  it  may  be  called,  higher  ground, 
with  entire  consistency.  It  is  quite  compatible 
with  the  principle  of  utility  to  recognize  the  fact, 
that  some  kinds  of  pleasure  are  more  desirable 
and  more  valuable  than  others.  It  would  be  ab- 
surd that  while,  in  estimating  all  other  things, 
quality  is  considered  as  well  as  quantity,  the  esti- 
mation of  pleasures  should  be  supposed  to  depend 
on  quantity  alone."* 

Bentham  had  recognized  no  difference  at  all 
between  pleasure  and  happiness.  Mill,  by  his 
addition  of  a  qualitative  standard,  was  really 

*  Utilitarianism,  Chap.  iL 


92  PLATONISM 

feeling  his  way  towards  a  standard  of  morality 
above  pleasure,  while  still  verbally  denying  the 
existence  of  such  a  standard.^  He  is  the  example 

^  Surely  there  is  no  consistency,  but  inconsistency,  in  the 
two  members  of  Mill's  sentence:  "On  all  these  points  utili- 
tarians have  fully  proved  their  case;  but  they  might  have 
taken  the  other,  and,  as  it  might  be  called,  higher  ground, 
with  entire  consistency."  If  the  utilitarians  are  right  in 
making  "permanency,  safety,"  etc.  the  standard  of  value 
and  desirability  among  pleasures,  what  is  the  need  or  mean- 
ing of  another,  qualitative  standard.'' — I  admit  freely  that 
this  question  of  a  qualitative  and  quantitative  standard  of 
pleasures  is  extremely  subtle,  and  for  its  complete  answer, 
in  accordance  with  the  Platonic  philosophy,  should  be  de- 
ferred until  after  the  consideration  of  Plato's  psychology 
and  cosmology.  A  qualitative  standard  would  seem  to  rest 
on  the  difference  between  the  sensation  of  pleasure  in  the 
fulfilment  of  physical  desires  (the  cTndvfirjTLKov)  and  the 
emotion  of  pleasure  in  the  satisfaction  of  personal  desires 
(the  6v/jj6i),  between,  that  is,  such  a  sensation  as  that  which 
accompanies  the  quenching  of  thirst  and  such  an  emotion 
as  that  which  accompanies  the  satisfaction  of  pride  or 
vanity.  But  the  consistent  utilitarian  would  maintain  that 
the  difference  here  is  still  really  quantitative,  and  so  com- 
mensurable, being  measured  by  permanency,  etc.,  as  well  as 
by  intensity ;  and  he  would  argue  that  the  personal  emotions 
are  more  considerable  than  the  physical  sensations  by  a  true 
quantitative  standard.  I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  utili- 
tarian has  proved,  or  could  prove,  his  case.  If  this  double 
quantitative  standard  of  intensity  and  of  permanency  is  re- 
ferred to  the  cosmological  dualism  of  the  one  and  the  many, 
the  immutable  and  the  flux,  it  will  be  seen  that  pleasure, 
as  a  momentarily  shifting  sensation,  tends  to  commingle 
itself  with  pain,  and,  as  an  unchecked  distraction  moving 
in  the  direction  of  the  flux,  must  be  so  far  adjudged  evil.  It 
becomes  good  on  the  contrary  only  in  so  far  as  it  subserves 
the  more  stable  part  of  our  personal  self.    Meanwhile  there 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  93 

par  excellence  of  a  philosopher  who  combines  the 
most  lucid  powers  of  exposition  with  an  incapa- 
city of  clear  thinking.  The  entanglement  of  Mill 
and  the  later  utilitarians  was  patent  to  T.  H. 
Green,  who  sought  a  way  of  escape  by  saving  de- 
sire as  a  motive  of  action  while  changing  the  ob- 
ject of  desire.  To  this  end  he  sets  up  a  distinc- 
tion between  pleasure  and  what  he  calls  "self- 
satisfaction,"  and  argues  that  the  object  of  our 
desire  is  not  pleasure  or  even  the  pleasure  of  self- 
satisfaction,  but  is  this  self-satisfaction  for  its  own 
sake,  while  pleasure,  if  it  comes,  is  a  mere  contin- 
gent effect.  By  this  analysis  of  the  object  of  de- 
sire he  thinks  he  has  pointed  to  the  source  of  Mill's 
confusion  and  has  established  a  criterion  of  val- 
ues superior  to  pleasm-e.  Now  many  of  Green's 
pages  devoted  to  the  elucidation  and  expansion 
of  his  idea  of  self-satisfaction  are  rich  with  the 
burden  of  history,  and  there  is  a  hearty  kernel  of 
truth  in  his  argument.  But  there  are  two  fatal 
weaknesses.  In  the  first  place  Green's  notion  that 
^^//-satisfaction  may  consist  in  the  sacrifice  of  the 
individual's  well-being  for  the  well-being  of  so- 
ciety is  only  Bentham's  old  fallacy,  decked  out 
in  new  terms,  of  supposing  that  we  can  appeal  to 
pleasure  as  the  motive  of  conduct  and  then  avoid 

can  be  no  harm,  I  think,  in  speaking  of  the  admission  of 
a  seemingly  qualitative  difference  in  pleasures  as  a  step 
towards  recognizing  the  fundamental  distinction  between 
pleasure  and  happiness. 


94  PLATONISM 

the  egotistic  consequences  of  such  a  creed  by 
merging  pleasure  in  the  greatest  happiness  (as 
the  utihtarians  use  the  word)  of  the  greatest 
number.  And,  secondly,  Green  is  blind  to  the 
fact  that,  by  rejecting  pleasure  as  his  motive  yet 
failing  to  find  the  criterion  of  self-satisfaction  in 
happiness  as  a  feeling  distinct  in  kind  from 
pleasure,  he  leaves  his  standard  of  self-satisfac- 
tion— so  long  as  he  writes  consistently — without 
verifiable  meaning  or  content.  Take  one  of  his 
typical  sections : 

.  .  .  "To  the  question.  What  is  the  well-being 
which  in  a  calm  hour  we  desire  but  a  succession 
of  pleasures?  we  reply  as  follows.  The  ground 
of  this  desire  is  a  demand  for  an  abiding  satisfac- 
tion of  an  abiding  self.  In  a  succession  of  plea- 
sures there  can  be  no  such  satisfaction,  nor  in  the 
longest  prolongation  of  the  succession  any  nearer 
approach  to  it  than  in  the  first  pleasure  enjoyed. 
If  a  man,  therefore,  under  the  influence  of  the 
spiritual  demand  described,  were  to  seek  any  suc- 
cession of  pleasures  as  that  which  would  satisfy 
the  demand,  he  would  be  under  a  delusion.  Such 
a  delusion  may  be  possible,  but  we  are  not  to  sup- 
pose that  it  takes  place  because  many  persons, 
through  a  mistaken  analysis  of  their  inner  ex- 
perience, affirm  that  they  have  no  idea  of  well- 
being  but  as  a  succession  of  pleasures."® 

How  often,  while  reading  such  passages  as 

"  Prolegomena  §  234. 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO        .  96 

these,  we  feel  that  Green  is  on  the  verge  of  mak- 
ing the  great  discovery  made  by  Plato  so  long 
ago,  but  is  held  back  by  the  age-old  fallacy  of 
regarding  happiness,  or  whatever  you  choose  to 
call  it,  as  nothing  more  than  a  succession  or  con- 
summation of  pleasures!  What  vain  circumlo- 
cutions his  noble  spirit  would  have  been  spared, 
and  what  hair-splitting  subtleties  of  argimient, 
if  he  had  been  able  to  say  in  simple,  straightfor- 
ward language,  "This  self-satisfaction  or  well- 
being  which  I  am  trying  so  hard  to  offer  as  a 
substitute  for  the  unsatisfaction  of  pleasure  is 
just  the  happiness  that  every  man  has  felt  and 
may  understand"!^ 

No,  mankind  craves  happiness;  it  can  be 
weaned  from  the  seduction  of  false  pleasures  only 
by  this  possession  which  is  so  like  pleasure  yet 
greater  and  essentially  other  than  pleasure,  and 
it  will  be  diverted  by  no  empty  promises  or 
threats.  The  whole  religious  literature  of  the 
world,  truer  in  its  candid  reliance  on  the  intui- 
tive knowledge  of  the  soul  than  are  the  rebellious 
searchings  of  the  schools,  is  replete  with  appeals 
to  our  consciousness  of  the  difference  between 
pleasure  and  the  rapture,  or  peace,  or  happiness 
— the  word  is  nought  but  the  fact  is  everything — 

^  The  distinction  between  pleasure  and  happiness  is  im- 
plicit in  such  passages  of  the  Prolegomena  as  §§  228,  288 ; 
but  it  is  never  defined  or  brought  out  into  the  light,  and  for 
the  most  part  Green  accepts  happiness  in  the  utilitarian 
sense  as  the  sum  of  pleasures. 


96  PLATONISM 

of  obedience  to  a  higher  law  than  our  personal 
or  physical  desires.  I  could  cover  many  pages 
with  passages  to  this  effect;  a  single  quotation 
from  one  of  the  older  of  our  English  divines,  the 
length  of  which  may  be  excused  by  the  impor- 
tance of  the  topic,  will  suffice: 

"That  joy  should  be  enjoined,  that  sadness 
should  be  prohibited,  may  it  not  be  a  plausible 
exception  against  such  a  precept,  that  it  is  super- 
fluous and  needless,  seeing  all  the  endeavours  of 
men  do  aim  at  nothing  else  but  to  procure  joy 
and  eschew  sorrow ;  seeing  all  men  do  conspire  in 
opinion  with  Solomon,  that  a  man  hath  nothing 
better  under  the  sun  than — to  he  merry. 

"It  is  true  that  men,  after  a  confused  manner, 
are  very  eager  in  the  quest,  and  earnest  in  the 
pursuit  of  joy;  they  rove  through  all  the  forests 
of  creatures,  and  beat  every  bush  of  nature  for 
it,  hoping  to  catch  it  either  in  natural  endow- 
ments and  improvements  of  soul,  or  in  the  gifts 
of  fortune,  or  in  the  acquists  of  industry ;  in  tem- 
poral possessions,  in  sensual  enjoyments,  in  ludi- 
crous divertisements  and  amusements  of  fancy; 
so  each  in  his  way  doth  incessantly  prog  for  joy; 
but  all  much  in  vain,  or  without  any  considerable 
success ;  finding  at  most,  instead  of  it,  some  faint 
shadows,  or  transitory  flashes  of  pleasure,  the 
which,  depending  on  causes  very  contingent  and 
mutable,  residing  in  a  frail  temper  of  fluid  hu- 
mours of  the  body,  consisting  in  slight  touches 
upon  the  organs  of  sense,  in  frisks  of  the  corpor- 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  97 

eal  spirits  or  in  fumes  and  vapours  twitching  the 
imagination,  do  soon  flag  and  expire. 

"Wherefore  there  is  ground  more  than  enough, 
that  we  should  be  put  to  seek  for  a  true,  substan- 
tial, and  consistent  joy.  It  is  a  scandalous  mis- 
prision, vulgarly  admitted,  concerning  religion, 
that  it  is  altogether  sullen  and  sour.  Such,  in- 
deed, is  the  transcendent  goodness  of  our  God, 
that  he  maketh  our  delight  to  be  our  duty,  and 
our  sorrow  to  be  our  sin,  adapting  his  holy  will 
to  our  principal  instinct;  that  he  would  have  us 
to  resemble  himself,  as  in  all  other  perfections, 
so  in  a  constant  state  of  happiness.  Indeed,  to 
exercise  piety  and  to  rejoice  are  the  same  things, 
or  things  so  interwoven  that  nothing  can  disjoin 
them."« 

It  is  the  honour  of  Plato  that  he  held  fast  to 
this  fundamental  truth  of  religion,  while  basing 
it  on  the  immediate  intuition  of  the  mind,  with- 
out necessary  recourse  to  the  problematical  re- 
wards and  penalties  of  another  state  of  existence. 

This  is  the  beginning  of  Plato's  dualism,  but 
not  the  end.  If  happiness  and  pleasure  are  dis- 
tinct feelings,  it  will  follow  that  the  activities  they 
accompany,  or  the  motives  of  our  activity,  are 
likewise  distinguished  in  kind.  We  are  brought 
back  to  that  troublesome  and  recurring  question 
of  the  early  Dialogues  as  to  the  identity  or  sep- 
arateness  of  the  virtues.     Somehow  it  appeared 

**  From  the  forty-third  sermon  of  Isaac  Barrow,  with 
omissions. 


98  PLATONISM 

there,  as  we  took  up  bravery  and  temperance  and 
holiness  in  turn,  that  they  all  had  a  tendency  to 
run  together  into  one  supreme  virtue;  yet,  as 
soon  as  we  reached  this  point,  invariably  the  par- 
ticular virtue  under  discussion  lost  its  concrete 
value,  and  we  were  left  with  an  empty  word  on 
our  hands  which  had  no  significance  for  solving 
the  specific  problems  of  hfe.  Now,  if  we  return 
to  these  unanswered  puzzles  after  considering 
Plato's  later  Dialogues,  we  shall  see  that  the  dif- 
ficulty lay  in  the  ambiguity  of  the  word  "virtue" 
(arete),  which  is  used  for  two  quite  different 
things.  For  our  own  convenience,  therefore,  we 
will  henceforth  make  a  distinction  in  language 
which  Plato  himself  never  made,  by  using  differ- 
ent translations  for  the  same  word  to  denote  a 
distinction  in  fact  which  he  did  make.  So  far  as 
possible  we  will  reserve  the  word  "virtue"  for 
the  art  of  living,  for  right  conduct,  that  is,  as 
manifested  in  specific  spheres  of  activity,  and 
will  adopt  the  word  "morahty"  for  the  higher 
unity  in  which  the  particular  virtues  seemed  to 
have  a  way  of  losing  themselves. 

It  is  not  easy  to  decide  how  fully  Plato  him- 
self in  his  earlier  Dialogues  was  aware  of  this  dis- 
tinction which  later  becomes  so  important  to  his 
ethical  system.  In  the  Protagoras  it  is  latent. 
We  can  see  it  growing  clearer  in  the  Phaedo  and 
the  Meno,  though  it  is  there  still  only  implicit. 
In  The  Republic  the  distinction  is  something 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  99 

more  than  implied  by  the  separate  treatment  of 
the  group  of  virtues — wisdom,  bravery,  temper- 
ance— on  the  one  hand  and  of  justice  on  the  other. 
Wisdom  is  the  right  action  of  our  reason,  brav- 
ery of  the  thymoSj  and  temperance  of  the  desires. 
These  are  the  specific  virtues.  Justice  is  the  com- 
pelMng  and  governing  force  behind  all  these 
forms  of  activity,  the  healthy  balance  of  the  soul 
as  a  whole  and  its  right  energy  as  a  unit.  This 
distinction  between  morality  as  the  central  gov- 
erning force  and  the  virtues  as  specific  forms  of 
activity  is  brought  out  even  more  clearly  in  the 
Politicus,  where  it  is  shown  that  the  specific  306a  «. 
virtues,  or  perhaps  we  should  say  the  tendencies 
that  create  them,  may  come,  if  left  to  them- 
selves, into  actual  conflict  one  with  another. 
Thus,  for  example,  bravery  and  temperance 
are  not  only  different  one  from  the  other,  but 
may  take  hostile  sides  in  the  soul  of  a  man 
or  in  a  State.  Bravery,  in  so  far  as  it  is  the 
quality  of  a  temperament  quick  and  virile  by 
nature,  is  apt,  if  unrestrained,  to  run  into  im- 
petuosity and  insolence;  whereas  temperance,  as 
it  is  found  in  a  disposition  inclined  to  slowness 
and  quiet,  may  very^  easily  sink  into  sloth  and 
cowardliness.  These  temperaments  and  virtues 
manifest  themselves  in  two  classes  of  men  who 
may  divide  a  city  into  factious  parties  (Plato 
would  say  today  into  radicals  and  conserva- 
tives), and  whom  it  is  the  art  of  the  true  states- 


100  PLATONISM 

man  to  reconcile  in  friendly  co-operation  for  the 
common  good.  Though  Plato  does  not  here  draw 
the  parallel  out  in  so  many  words,  it  is  every- 
where implied  that  this  royal  art  (basilike 
techne)  of  the  governing  statesman  is  but  an- 
other name  for  justice,  equivalent  to  the  moral 
principle  that  in  the  individual  soul  resides  above 
the  various  activities,  and  governs  and  harmo- 
nizes the  specific  virtues. 

But  for  the  final  exposition  of  this,  as  of  so 
many  other  doctrines,  we  must  turn  to  the  book 
Laws  963a  ff  of  Plato's  oM  agc.  All  our  laws,  he  says  at  the 
conclusion  of  that  long  treatise,  must  be  con- 
trolled by  some  one  purpose.  As  the  physician 
has  a  definite  end  in  view,  the  preservation  of 
health,  to  which  all  his  activities  are  directed,  and 
as  the  pilot  has  a  definite  task,  so  it  must  be  with 
the  statesman,  or  lawgiver.  The  aim  of  the 
statesman  is  the  creation  and  preservation  of  vir- 
tue in  the  State ;  and  as  his  aim  is  thus  not  many, 
but  one,  so  the  virtues  which  have  appeared  to 
us  all  along  as  fourfold  must  also  in  some  way  be 
one  virtue,  or  subordinate  to  some  one  moral  pur- 
pose. It  was  easy  to  see  what  was  meant  by  the 
special  virtue  of  bravery ;  it  is  a  manner  of  facing 
things  fearful.  The  nature  of  wisdom,  too,  is 
clear;  it  is  a  kind  of  prudence  in  the  choice  and 
use  of  means.  And  in  the  same  way  we  under- 
stand temperance  and  justice.  But  what  is  the 
character  of  the  moral  force  in  subservience  to 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  101 

which  these  various  virtues  are  united?  It  is  a 
kind  of  wisdom — not  prudence,  but  the  mind,  or 
intelligence — working  in  him  who  is  able  not  only 
to  discern  the  many  different  activities  of  hfe  but 
to  look  beyond  them ;  the  divine  vision  of  him  who, 
whatever  may  be  the  field  of  observation,  is  able 
to  behold  the  changeless  law  above  all  change.  It 
is  the  knowledge,  rehgiously  speaking,  of  the 
gods,  that  they  are  and  that  they  govern  the 
world  by  a  beneficent  design.  There  are  two 
ways  by  which  we  may  approach  this  supreme 
knowledge:  one  by  the  soul's  perception  of  her 
own  nature,  that  she  is  the  oldest  and  most  divine 
of  existing  things,  lord  of  the  body  by  right  of 
age  and  dignity;  the  other  by  the  perception  of 
the  ordered  motion  of  the  stars  and  of  all  created 
objects  that  display  the  governance  of  an  omnis- 
cient intelligence;  and  these  two  ways  are  virtu- 
ally one.  He  will  be  a  true  worshipper  of  the 
gods  who  has  attained  to  this  knowledge  of  the 
soul's  hegemony  and  of  the  indwelling  reason  of 
the  universe.  He  alone  possesses  that  saving 
morahty  (arete  sdterias)  which  fits  him  to  be  the  969c 
ruler  of  himself  and  of  the  State.® 

°  Philo  Judaeus,  in  his  Legum  Allegoria  (I,  68  flF.)  has 
a  quaint  comparison  of  the  i-ptr^  yeviicfi,  as  he  calls  the 
super-virtue,  and  the  four  iperaX  icarA  yApot  with  the  river 
that  went  out  of  Eden  to  water  the  garden,  and  from 
thence  was  parted,  and  became  into  four  heads.  The  doc- 
trine is  Stoic  as  well  as  Platonic.  See,  for  instance,  Sto- 
baeus,  Ethica  VI,  i. 


102  PLATONISM 

Such,  freely  and  succinctly  rendered,  but  I 
think  not  misinterpreted,  is  the  ethical  position  of 
Plato  in  the  conclusion  of  the  Laws  and  at  the 
end  of  his  life.  Substantially  it  is  the  same  as 
the  doctrine  of  The  Republic,  though  the  termin- 
ology is  different.  In  both  Dialogues  there  are 
four  virtues,  one  of  which  is  taken — with  some 
confusion  of  thought,  it  must  be  admitted — now 
as  parallel  with  the  others,  and  now  as  distinct 
from  them  by  reason  of  its  quality  of  leadership 
and  comprehensiveness.  The  Republic  gave  the 
double  function  to  justice;  in  the  Laws  justice 
tends  to  be  limited  to  the  political  virtue  of  right 
distribution,  whereas  the  moral  leadership  is 
transferred  to  the  reason,  in  such  a  way  that  wis- 
dom is  treated  both  as  one  of  the  four  cardinal 
virtues  and  as  the  queen  over  them  all.  Evi- 
dently this  ambiguous  position  of  wisdom  is  ex- 
plained by  the  fact  that  we  are  dealing  with  two 
kinds  of  knowledge,  and  points  to  a  further  dual- 
ism of  Plato's  philosophy. 

Along  with  the  question  of  the  unity  and  di- 
versity of  the  virtues  there  ran  through  all  the 
early  Dialogues  another  problem,  which  was  left 
in  an  equally  unsettled  state.  The  morality,  or 
super-virtue,  into  which  the  specific  virtues  had  a 
fashion  of  merging  and  so  escaping  our  search, 
was  always  some  kind  of  wisdom  or  knowledge. 
Bravery,  so  soon  as  it  became  a  desirable  quality 
and  no  mere  impetuosity  of  temper,  involved  a 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  108 

knowledge  of  what  things  are  properly  to  be 
feared  and  what  are  not.  Temperance  was 
meaningless  until  we  acquired  an  understanding 
of  ourselves  and  of  what  was  good  for  us.  It 
would  follow  that,  if  all  these  forms  of  virtue  rest 
on  a  body  of  knowledge,  they  ought  to  be  teach- 
able, like  medicine  or  any  other  art;  yet  in  prac- 
tice there  seem  to  be  no  teachers  to  whom  a  man 
can  go  to  learn  morahty  as  he  can  go  to  a  physi- 
cian to  learn  medicine.  This  paradox  reached  its 
climax  in  the  Protagoras,  where  Socrates  argued 
that  theoretically  all  the  virtues  are  knowledge 
yet  practically  are  not  teachable,  while  his  an- 
tagonist held  that  the  virtues  have  each  their  indi- 
vidual character  apart  from  knowledge  yet  can 
be  taught. 

It  now  appears  that  this  paradox  lay  in  the 
ambiguity  of  a  word;  and  in  the  later  Dialogues, 
whatever  may  be  said  of  the  other  aspects  of 
Plato's  philosophy,  the  double  character  of  the 
relation  of  the  mind  to  facts  is  brought  out  with 
a  precision  and  dwelt  on  with  a  persistence  which 
leave  no  doubt  of  his  fundamental  dualism.  In 
The  Republic  the  distinction  is  represented  pic- 
torially  by  the  bifurcated  line,  separating  know- 
ledge proper  from  what  is  properly  called  opin- 
ion ;  and  thereafter  these  two  terms  are  employed 
regularly  for  the  two  processes  that  caused  the 
earlier  ambiguity.  The  full  bearing  of  this  ter- 
minology on  Plato's  system  must  be  left  for  an- 


160D 
168b 


104  PLATONISM 

other  chapter.  Here  the  point  to  observe  is  that 
the  primary  motive  for  making  the  distinction  is 
rather  ethical  than  metaphysical,  as  may  be  seen 
from  the  trend  of  the  argument  in  the  Theaetetus. 

163A  The  avowed  purpose  of  this  Dialogue  is  to  de- 
termine whether  knowledge  and  perception 
(episteme  and  aisthesis)  are  the  same  thing  or 
different  things ;  to  discover,  that  is,  whether  we 
have  any  fixed  and  certain  form  of  knowledge. 
But  this  thesis  soon  becomes  involved  with  the 
subsidiary  questions  whether  all  things  are  in  a 
state  of  flux  and  whether  man  is  the  measure  of 
all  things.  Twice  at  least  these  three  problems 
are  brought  together  quite  definitely,  but  for  the 
most  part  the  discussion  passes  from  one  to  an- 
other of  them  after  the  rather  disconcerting  man- 
ner sometimes  adopted  by  Plato.  The  best  clue 
to  guide  the  reader  through  this  labyrinth  is  a 
sense  of  what  was  the  dominating  interest  in  the 
author's  mind;  nor  is  this  interest  hard  to  dis- 
cover. Here,  as  almost  everywhere  in  Plato,  the 
bias  is  ethical ;  the  real  animus  of  the  Dialogue  is 

i57d  the  desire  to  demolish  the  belief,  shared  by  the 
sophists  with  their  audiences,  that  there  is  no 
certain  reality  behind  our  sense  of  the  good  and 
the  beautiful.  And  so,  in  a  way,  the  process  of 
proving  is  inverted :  if  this  stronghold  of  popular 
unreason  is  undermined,  then  the  answers  to  the 
three  troublesome  questions  will  follow  of  them- 
selves.   If  you  grant  the  existence  of  a  principle 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  106 

of  goodness,  fixed  and  immutable,  then  there  is 
a  standard  of  values  fixed,  there  is  something  be- 
sides the  flux,  there  is  a  knowledge  superior  to 
that  depending  on  outer  perception  (which  Plato 
will  grant  to  the  flux),  and  man,  in  the  Prota- 
gorean  sense,  is  not  the  measure  of  all  things. 

To  this  end  the  arch-sophist  Protagoras  is 
brought  to  the  bar,  and  under  the  cross-question- 
ing of  Socrates  is  forced  to  admit  the  inclusion  of 
a  standard  of  "better"  and  "worse"  in  our  judg- 
ments. But,  while  making  this  admission,  he 
still  clings  to  his  dogma  that  man  (that  is,  al- 
ways, man  as  a  creature  totally  immersed  in  the 
flux)  is  the  measure  of  all  things;  he  still  main- 
tains that  as  things  seem  just  and  beautiful  to  i67c 
each  State,  such  they  are  as  long  as  the  State  so 
judges  them.  Socrates  retorts  with  the  argu- 
ment that,  if  there  is  no  objective  and  fixed  re- 
ality in  the  moral  world,  no  standard  by  which 
the  degrees  of  better  and  worse  can  be  deter- 
mined, then  the  use  of  such  words  as  "just"  and 
"beautiful"  is  perfectly  meaningless — a  conclu- 
sion against  which  our  common  sense  revolts  im- 
placably. Furthermore,  though  a  man  may  as- 
sert that  the  just  is  whatever  a  State  regards  as 
better  for  itself  in  the  sense  of  being  more  profit- 
able, yet  no  one  will  say,  unless  he  is  merely 
amusing  himself  with  words,  that  whatever  a 
State  regards  as  profitable,  and  so  establishes  as  1770 
the  law  of  justice,  will  necessarily  turn  out  to 


106  PLATONISM 

be  profitable  in  the  event.  This  introduces  the 
question  of  the  future,  and  shows  that  at  least  the 
profitable  is  not  measured  by  the  present  opin- 
ions of  men  (in  other  words,  that  to  this  extent 
man  is  not  the  measure),  and  that  probably  the 
justice  which  the  sophists  are  so  fond  of  connect- 
ing with  profit  may  also  be  something  uncon- 
trolled by  opinion — something  about  which  it 
very  much  behoves  a  man  to  get  not  opinion  but 
knowledge. 

But  is  there  any  such  thing  as  knowledge? 
How  shall  we  take  it  as  a  guide  unless  we  know 
what  it  is  ?  Plato  has  no  answer  to  this  question 
put  as  a  problem  of  epistemology.     We  cannot, 

209E  he  declares,  get  at  a  knowledge  of  what  know- 
ledge is  by  analysing  the  process  of  knowing,  for 
the  reason  that  this  analysis  implies  knowledge 
of  the  parts,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum.     And  again 

196D  he  asks,  as  might  be  asked  of  any  one,  ancient  or 
modem,  who  thinks  the  tantalizing  problem  of 
epistemology  has  been  solved,  whether  perhaps 
it  was  not  a  bit  impudent  ever  to  have  supposed 
they  were  going  to  define  the  process  of  knowing 
when  they  did  not  know  what  knowledge  is.^**  It 
is  characteristic  of  Plato,  however,  that  he  does 
not  deny  the  possibility  of  defining  knowledge  in 
the  terms  of  the  intellect,  but  only  confesses  the 

^**  For  Plato's  scepticism  in  regard  to  epistemology  see 
also  Charmides  169a. 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  107 

failure  on  this  occasion  to  reach  such  a  definition. 
He  will  not  step  beyond  the  bounds  of  Socratic 
scepticism:  so  far,  he  says,  using  Socrates  as  his  210c 
mouthpiece,  and  no  further  my  art  prevails,  to 
clarify  the  mind  of  the  docile  listener  and  make 
him  more  agreeable  to  his  friends. 

But  with  this  sceptical  outcome  as  regards  the 
avowed  epistemological  issue,  the  Dialogue  con- 
tains two  statements,  one  dropped  casually  by 
the  way,  the  other  uttered  with  all  the  impressive- 
ness  at  Plato's  command,  which  permit  us  to  see 
what  positive  answer  Plato  had  in  reserve.  The 
former  occurs  in  connection  with  a  rather  whim-  202B 
sical  account  of  the  aboriginal  irrational  elements 
underlying  phenomena,  which  can  be  named  but 
of  which  nothing  can  be  predicated,  and  suggests 
that  there  may  be  similar  elements  of  sensation 
in  the  soul,  in  regard  to  which  the  soul  may  be  in 
a  state  of  truth,  although  it  cannot  be  said  to 
know  them,  since  knowledge  comes  only  with 
rational  discourse."  The  other,  and  more  ex- 
phcit,  statement  is  made  in  the  digression  on  the  i76» 

^^  This  passage  of  the  Theaetetus  is,  I  admit,  obscure. 
My  interpretation  of  it  would  be  confirmed  by  a  sentence 
of  the  Philebua  (66c),  as  read  by  Ficino:  lUfiirTas  toiVvv, 
as  ifSova;  idtfixv  oAvrrovs  bpuraixivoi,  Ka6apa<!  (Trovofiaaavrt^  rrji 
^^XV'*  <^^fV'*  <Ti(rT7;/>uis,  Tais  Si  aicr6r}(Tta-iv  kirofiivas  —  puraa 
nominantes  animae  ipsius  scientias,  sensus  autem  sequentes. 
But  however  this  passage  of  the  Theaetetus  be  taken,  there 
is  no  possibility  of  misunderstanding  the  words  in  which 
Plato  affirms  the  reality  of  the  superrational  intuition. 


108  PLATONISM 

philosophic  life,  which,  to  one  not  familiar  with 
Plato's  indirect  methods,  might  appear  to  be 
strangely  out  of  place  in  the  heart  of  this  Dia- 
logue. Our  only  refuge  from  the  evils  of  this 
world,  says  Socrates,  is  to  render  ourselves  like 
unto  God.  In  him  there  is  no  injustice,  no  shadow 
of  wrong,  but,  as  we  conceive  things,  purest  jus- 
tice; and  there  is  nothing  that  more  resembles 
God  than  he  among  us  who  becomes  as  just  as 
it  is  possible  for  man  to  be.  The  knowledge 
(gnosis^  superrational  intuition)  of  this  truth  is 
wisdom  and  morality,  and  the  ignorance  of  this 
truth  is  folly  and  manifest  evil;  and  all  other 
seeming  wisdom  is  comparatively  a  vulgar  and 
mean  thing. 

The  TheaetettLS,  so  analysed,  bears  throughout 
on  the  question  now  under  consideration.  Leav- 
ing aside  as  doubtful  and,  for  the  present  pur- 
pose, relatively  unimportant  the  suggestion  of  an 
infrarational  intuition  of  immediate  sensation, 
we  have  these  two  conclusions:  an  admission  of 
the  practical  impossibiMty  of  discovering  any  defi- 
nition of  knowledge  regarded  as  the  relation  of 
human  reason  to  objective  facts,  and  an  affirma- 
tion of  the  higher  intuition,  which  is  above  reason 
and  is  true  knowledge.  The  gist  of  the  argument 
is  the  opposition  between  the  Platonic  duaHsm  of 
knowledge  and  opinion  and  the  Protagorean 
(and,  in  general,  the  sophistic)  monism.  Plato 
does  not  deny  that  men  move  about  in  a  world  of 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  109 

shifting  impressions,  and  are  constrained  to  base 
their  conduct  on  judgments  drawn  from  observa- 
tion of  facts  which  never  can  be  complete ;  in  our 
practical  life,  so  far  as  it  is  concerned  with  phe- 
nomena, we  have  only  the  guidance  of  opinion. 
To  this  extent  he  agrees  with  Protagoras,  though 
even  here  he  draws  ethical  conclusions  very  dif- 
ferent from  those  of  the  sophist ;  but  he  does  deny 
flatly  the  Protagorean  dogma  that  this  shadowy 
form  of  opinion  is  all  we  have.  Were  Protago- 
ras right  he  might  have  referred  to  a  tadpole  or  a  i6ic 
pig  as  well  as  to  a  man  for  his  measure.  No, 
Plato  asserts,  besides  opinion,  whether  true  or 
false,  man  has  also  knowledge.  The  operation 
of  this  faculty  we  may  not  be  able  to  analyse,  but 
it  is  there,  within  our  souls,  giving  us  certain  in- 
formation of  the  everlasting  reality  of  righteous- 
ness and  loveliness  in  themselves,  as  things  apart 
from  the  flux,  and  bidding  us  look  to  the  God  of 
these  realities  for  the  measure  of  our  nature. 

Now,  in  this  dualism  of  knowledge  and  opinion 
is  found  the  answer  to  the  paradoxical  question 
as  to  the  teachableness  of  virtue.  Morality,  as 
the  force  behind  the  specific  virtues,  is  a  matter 
of  knowledge,  whereas  the  specific  virtues  are  de- 
pendent on  what  is  commonly  called  knowledge 
but  is  really  opinion;  and  opinion  can  be  formed 
by  instruction,  whereas  knowledge  cannot  be. 
Thus,  the  virtue  of  temperance  may  be  described 
as  a  golden  mean  in  our  action,  a  result  of  obe- 


110  PLATONISM 

dience  to  the  precept  "Nothing  too  much,"  which 
announces  to  each  urgent  desire:  So  far  shalt 
thou  go  and  no  further.  If,  for  example,  we  eat 
a  certain  amount  and  kind  of  food  ( and  no  chance 
intervene),  we  shall  be  healthy  and  enjoy  the 
pleasure  of  health;  if  we  transgress  through  ig- 
norance or  wilfulness,  we  shall  surely  injure  our 
health  and  suffer  the  pains  of  disease.  And  so  it 
is  with  all  the  other  activities  of  life,  under  which- 
ever of  the  specific  virtues  they  may  fall.  Our 
judgment  of  the  point  at  which  any  activity 
ceases  to  be  a  virtue  and  becomes  a  vice  is  deter- 
mined by  a  calculation  of  consequences  in  plea- 
sure and  pain,  and  the  rightness  or  wrongness  of 
our  calculation  will  depend  on  our  own  exper- 
ience and  on  the  similar  experience  of  others. 
The  experience  of  others  is  imparted  to  us  by  in- 
struction, and  so  it  is  that  the  specific  virtues  are 
teachable;  we  can  go  to  a  man  of  experience  to 
learn  the  nature  of  temperance  and  bravery  and 
wisdom  and  justice,  as  we  can  go  to  a  physician 
to  learn  the  precepts  of  his  art. 

Hence  the  weight  which  Plato  lays  on  the  edu- 
cation of  youth  in  the  choice  and  control  of 
pleasures  and  pains.  In  the  average  and  in  the 
long  run  the  man  so  trained,  having  the  tradi- 
tion of  society  to  correct  his  own  narrower  ex- 
perience, will  act  instinctively  on  a  proper  calcu- 
lation. But  it  is  to  be  noted  that  this  trained  in- 
stinct, though  the  only  guide  we  have  in  our 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  111 

specific  acts,  casts  no  more  than  a  flickering  light. 
Thus,  bravery,  when  it  rises  to  the  dignity  of  a 
virtue,  is  determined  by  a  man's  opinion  of  what 
should  be  feared  and  what  should  not,  and  of  the 
extent  to  which  he  should  give  rein  to  his  im- 
pulses of  hostility  and  self-defence.  It  is  a  reck- 
oning of  the  balance  of  pleasure  consequent  upon 
his  own  safety  and  upon  the  rewards  of  public 
esteem.  But  our  judgment  can  never  be  infalli- 
ble in  such  matters :  any  man,  by  an  error  of  cal- 
culation, may  attack  where  true  bravery  would 
have  counselled  retreat,  or  may  retreat  where 
true  bravery  would  have  counselled  attack.  The 
outcome,  moreover,  is  subject  to  hazards  beyond 
the  scope  of  his  consideration.  In  an  attack 
which  from  the  point  of  view  of  his  company  is 
prudent,  he  may  be  the  one  who  falls  into  the 
hands  of  the  enemy;  and  he  may  suffer  torture 
and  death  in  such  a  way  that  his  act  of  true  cour- 
age may  end,  so  far  as  he  personally  is  concerned, 
in  pain,  and  no  pleasure  at  all.  At  the  best, 
though  we  have  an  immediate  intuition  of  plea- 
sure and  pain  as  present  reahties,  as  soon  as  we 
begin  to  calculate  consequences  in  order  to  act, 
our  judgment  can  be  verified  only  ex  post  facto, 
and  the  virtues  cannot  be  raised  out  of  the  region 
of  uncertain  opinion. 

This  treachery  of  calculation  is  what  tends  to 
drag  the  hedonist  down  to  the  sty,  bidding  him 
distrust  the  more  elusive  rewards  of  virtue  and 


112  PLATONISM 

lay  hold  of  any  pleasure  near  at  hand  whose  pun- 
ishment is  not  swift  and  visible.  If  there  be  any 
steady  law  of  conduct  it  must  be  referred  to  a 
principle  freed  from  the  chances  of  fortune  and 
so  fortified  against  the  immediate  cravings  of 
appetite.  For  this  principle,  as  we  have  seen, 
Plato  turned  to  the  moral  impulsion  behind  the 
specific  virtues.  In  the  Laws  he  identified  it  with 
wisdom,  but  with  a  wisdom  drawn  from  the  soul's 
knowledge  of  herself  as  divine  and  akin  to  God, 
a  wisdom  quite  diflferent  from  the  virtue  identi- 
cal with  a  calculating  prudence.  In  The  Repub- 
lic the  same  moral  impulsion  was  called  justice; 
but  there  again  justice  was  so  defined  as  to  be 
synonymous  with  a  form  of  knowledge;  it  was 
the  intuition  commanded  in  the  Delphic  saluta- 
tion "Kjiow  thyself,"  as  the  virtues  are  taught  in 
the  other  Delphic  precept,  "Nothing  too  much." 
And  this  higher  knowledge,  as  we  have  also  seen, 
is  not  vague  or  empty  of  content,  but  rich  with 
fruition.  It,  too,  is  concerned  with  a  state  of 
feeling — not  those  pleasures,  in  which  the  opin- 
ions of  virtue  have  their  range,  but  the  happiness 
present  in  the  soul  with  the  purpose  to  act  virtu- 
ously and  dependent  on  the  purpose  alone.  No 
man  can  impart  this  knowledge  to  us,  though  he 
may  exhort  us  to  look  more  intently  into  the  na- 
ture of  our  being ;  the  knowledge  of  the  happiness 
of  morality  is  not  teachable,  but  comes  to  each  of 
us  secretly,  by  what  Plato,  speaking  mythologic- 
aUy,  calls  a  "divine  chance." 


DUALISM   OF    PLATO  113 

I  would  not  for  a  moment  maintain  that  no 
difficulties  adhere  to  this  dualism,  partly  implicit 
and  partly  explicit  in  the  philosophy  of  Plato, 
which  sets  pleasure,  virtue,  and  opinion  in  one 
group,  and  over  against  them  happiness,  moral- 
ity, and  knowledge.  We  are  here,  let  us  admit 
frankly,  in  the  region  of  paradox.  Indeed  dual- 
ism is  but  another  name  for  that  Socratic  Para- 
dox which  results  from  accepting  simultaneously 
both  the  spiritual  affirmation  of  Socrates  and  his 
identification  of  virtue  with  knowledge  (that  is, 
with  opinion,  as  something  distinct  from  the 
knowledge  of  the  spirit).  It  is  of  the  nature  of 
the  dualistic  intuition  that  it  cannot  be  ultimately 
explained  by  reason,  but  we  can  perhaps  make  its 
operation  clearer  by  an  illustration. 

When  Socrates  lay  in  prison,  awaiting  the  day 
of  execution,  he  was  visited  by  one  of  his  power- 
ful friends,  Crito,  who  pressed  money  upon  him 
to  bribe  his  way  out  and  so  to  escape  an  unfair 
doom.  Socrates'  reply  is  given  in  the  Dialogue 
that  goes  by  the  name  of  his  friend.  The  conver- 
sation turns  on  two  main  theses.  First  Socrates 
asks  Crito  whether  he  still  abides  by  their  old  de- 
cision of  former  days,  that  it  is  better,  no  matter 
what  the  circumstances  may  be,  to  do  justice  than 
to  do  injustice,  better  to  suffer  injustice  patient- 
ly, if  needs  be,  than  to  do  wrong  in  return?  To 
this  thesis  Crito  is  committed,  and  he  will  not  now 
draw  back.    And  note  that  there  is  no  real  dis- 


114  PLATONISM 

cussion  here,  but  a  direct  appeal  to  the  moral  in- 
tuition; for,  as  Socrates  declares,  between  one 
who  assents  to  this  affirmation  of  the  spirit  and 
one  who  dissents  there  is  no  common  ground  of 
debate,  but  each  necessarily  will  look  with  con- 
tempt on  the  views  of  the  other.  Then  fol- 
lows the  question:  What  is  the  right  course  of 
conduct  for  me,  Socrates,  under  the  particular 
circumstances  in  which  I  am  now  placed?  How 
shall  I  do  justice?  This  is  not  a  matter  of  intui- 
tion, to  be  settled  by  an  affirmation,  but  a  point 
to  be  argued  out  and  decided  on  its  merits,  like 
any  other  specific  case  of  virtue.  And  what  is 
the  argument?  In  the  first  place  Socrates  re- 
peats the  statement  of  the  Apology,  that  we  have 
no  certain  knowledge  of  death  whether  it  be  a 
good  thing  for  man  or  an  evil  thing.  So  far  the 
principle  of  scepticism  rules.  But  men  have 
learned  by  experience  that  it  is  a  good  thing  for 
a  city  to  be  governed  by  laws ;  since  then  only  is 
order  possible,  and  that  like-mindedness  of  citi- 
zens on  which  hang  all  the  strength  and  blessings 
of  civilization.  By  our  very  birth  and  education 
and  voluntary  residence  in  a  city  we  have  entered 
into  a  kind  of  contract  with  it,  and  we  ought 
either  to  submit  to  the  laws  as  they  are  or  to  bring 
about  the  passage  of  other  laws.  That  is  what 
men  mean  by  justice,  that  we  should  obey  the 
behests  of  the  city  or  persuade  it  to  think  other- 
wise; and,  in  view  of  our  ignorance  of  death  and 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  115 

money  and  so  many  other  things  of  the  sort  that 
seem  to  people  to  affect  their  personal  welfare, 
the  pursuit  of  justice  is  probably  the  best  calcu- 
lation of  pleasures  a  man  can  make.  '  Moreover, 
by  obedience  to  the  laws  of  men  we  shall  put  our- 
selves into  harmony  with  the  spirit  of  law  in  gen- 
eral, and  with  the  peaceful  and  orderly  move- 
ment of  the  universe.  Therefore,  Socrates  rea- 
sons, it  is  better  for  me  to  stay  here  where  I  am, 
and  to  abide  by  the  voice  of  the  laws  of  Athens. 
Now,  in  this  discussion  of  law  and  duty  So- 
crates says  not  a  word  which  would  not  have  been 
accepted  by  John  Stuart  Mill.  Wherein,  then, 
is  the  difference  between  Socrates'  position  and 
that  of  a  high-minded  utihtarian?  When  it 
comes  to  the  decision  of  a  particular  case,  they 
argue  and  decide  alike ;  both  reach  the  same  defi- 
nition of  what  is  just,  and  both  say  that  this  deci- 
sion must  be  followed  at  the  risk  of  losing  money 
and  comfort  and  even  life  itself.  So  far  they 
agree,  but  at  this  point  they  part  company,  and 
their  ways  are  in  opposite  directions.  To  Mill 
there  was  nothing  beyond  the  decision,  nothing 
(in  his  philosophy  taken  Uterally,  that  is,  for  in 
his  character  he  was  inconsistent)  to  give  validity 
to  the  decision  of  virtue  when  it  might  be  weak- 
ened by  doubts.  For,  after  all,  any  such  calcula- 
tion as  this  made  by  Socrates,  and  as  would  be 
made  by  Mill,  is  in  the  region  of  guessing;  unless 
it  can  be  reinforced  by  some  surer  intuition,  it 


116  PLATONISM 

will  yield  to  men  in  general  only  a  treacherous 
foundation  for  conduct,  and  this  enforcing  power 
of  intuition  is  precisely  what  Socrates  had  and 
what  utilitarianism  lacks.  Suppose  there  was  an 
error  in  the  reasoning  of  Socrates  when  he  re- 
fused the  opportunity,  as  Crito  says,  not  only  to 
carry  on  a  life  of  virtue  but  to  provide  for  the 
proper  training  of  his  children — suppose  Crito 
was  right  and  Socrates  was  wrong  (as  the  case 
might  well  be) ,  what  recompense  was  there  for  a 
man  who  sacrificed  himself  for  an  empty  name? 
And  without  the  assurance  of  some  criterion 
other  than  the  very  fallible  calculations  of  reason 
and  the  conflicting  precepts  of  tradition,  from 
what  source  was  a  man  in  Socrates'  position  to 
draw  the  strength  of  character  that  should  with- 
stand the  temptations  of  the  nearer  pleasure? 
There  is  no  such  resource  in  the  philosophy  of 
hedonism.  But  Socrates  did  not  waver.  He 
knew  that  it  was  better  to  do  justice  than  to  do 
injustice,  not  because  justice  would  probably 
bring  to  him  the  larger  pleasure  as  a  man  living 
in  a  city  and  universe  of  law  (though  this  too  he 
guessed) ,  but  because  the  very  intention  of  doing 
justice  certainly  brought  its  sufficient  reward. 
The  feeling  of  happiness  associated  with  moral 
purpose  was  so  much  more  real  to  him  than  were 
the  stings  of  pleasure  and  pain  that,  under  its 
compulsion,  he  could  afford  to  laugh  at  the 
doubts  which  might  weaken  his  loyalty  to  ap- 


DUALISM  OF  PLATO  117 

parent  virtue  by  contrasting  the  security  of  im- 
mediate pleasure  with  the  insecurity  of  a  long 
calculation,  and  by  pitting  the  intensity  of  per- 
sonal desires  against  the  duller  sense  of  partici- 
pating in  the  public  good. 

Fortunately  for  the  world  the  common  sense 
of  mankind  is  more  in  conformity  with  a  hedon- 
ism complemented,  as  it  was  in  Socrates,  by  in- 
tuition and  scepticism,  than  with  a  hedonism  that 
thinks  it  unnecessary  to  look  for  any  guide  be- 
yond the  light  of  its  own  tremulous  lamp. 


CHAPTER  V 


PSYCHOLOGY 


Plato's  ethical  philosophy  is  connected,  as  any 
system  of  ethics  must  be  connected,  with  a  par- 
ticular way  of  regarding  the  soul.  Its  end  is  in 
psychology,  and  we  are  thus  brought  face  to  face 
with  a  problem  of  consistency :  the  soul  under  his 
analysis  fell  into  three  faculties  (if  we  may  use 
this  word  without  its  modern  psychological  impli- 
cations), yet  his  ethics  is  essentially  dualistic. 
How  are  these  two  positions  to  be  reconciled? 

The  apparent  discrepancy  of  Plato's  philo- 
sophy in  this  matter  has  troubled  more  than  one 
of  the  commentators  on  The  Republic.     In  a 
602c   note  on  a  critical  passage  of  the  tenth  book  James 
Adam  has  these  significant  words : 

"The  reasoning  from  here  to  607a  has  been 
supposed  to  rest  on  a  psychological  theory  irre- 
concilable with  that  of  Book  iv,  to  which  the  dis- 
cussion expressly  alludes  (in  602e).  See  for  ex- 
ample Krohn  PI.  St.  p.  255  and  Pfleiderer  Zur 
Losung  etc.  p.  38.  It  is  true  that  Plato  is  here 
content,  in  view  of  his  immediate  purpose,  with 
a  twofold  division  of  the  soul  into  (1)  a 
rational  and  (2)  an  irrational,  alogiston  (604d, 
605b),  or  lower  element.  But  the  resemblance 
between  the  two  theories  is  greater  than  the  dif- 

118 


PSYCHOLOGY  119 

ference,  for  (a)  the  logistikon  is  common  to  both, 
and  (b)  on  its  moral  side  the  irrational  element 
appears  sometimes  as  the  e pithy metikon  (606d), 
sometimes  as  a  degenerate  form  of  the  thymo- 
eides  (604e,  606a)." 

The  point  is  well  taken,  and  is  enforced  chiefly 
by  the  characterization  of  the  good  man  under 
the  stress  of  adversity.  "There  is,"  says  Plato,  604a 
"a  principle  of  reason  and  law  in  him  which  com- 
mands him  to  resist,  and  there  is  likewise  the 
sense  of  his  misfortune  which  is  forcing  him  to 
indulge  his  sorrow.  But  when  a  man  is  drawn  in 
contrary  directions  at  once  in  regard  to  the  same 
object,  we  say  that  there  must  be  two  elements 
in  him.  The  law  affirms  that  to  be  patient  under 
suffering  is  best,  and  that  we  should  not  give  way 
to  impatience,  since  in  fact  it  is  not  clear  whether 
our  state  is  good  or  evil,  and  anyhow  nothing  is 
gained  by  resentment;  none  of  the  events  of  hu- 
man life  is  of  serious  importance,  and  grief  stands 
in  the  way  of  that  state  which  we  need  to  attain  as 
speedily  as  possible.  Then  there  is  the  other 
principle,  which  inclines  us  to  recollection  of  our 
troubles  and  to  lamentations,  and  can  never  have 
enough  of  them;  this  we  may  call  irrational,  fu- 
tile, and  cowardly."  Such  a  description  admits 
of  no  ambiguity.  On  one  side  it  sets  the  govern- 
ing, controlling,  inhibiting  energy  of  the  soul, 
working  to  the  end  of  law  and  reason;  on  the 
other  side,  all  that  part  of  the  soul  which  suffers 


1«0  PLATONISM 

and  desires  and  which  is  repugnant  to  self-mas- 
tery. Mr.  Adam  was  correct  in  arguing  that  this 
analysis  is  only  superficially  inconsistent  with  the 
psychology  of  the  fourth  book,  but  he  errs,  I 
think,  in  holding  that  the  dualism  here  imposed 
on  the  threefold  division  of  the  faculties  is  for 
immediate  purposes  alone,  rather  than  funda- 
mental to  Plato's  philosophy.  He  might  have 
been  warned  of  this  error  by  a  consideration  of 
the  series  of  portraits  of  the  eighth  and  ninth 
books,  from  which  was  drawn  the  account  of  the 
Tyrant's  Progress,  and  which  is  avowedly  a  re- 
turn to  the  interrupted  argument  of  the  fourth 
book. 

What  is  the  cause  of  that  degeneration  from 
the  highest  type  of  liberty  down  to  the  basest 
condition  of  slavery?  The  just  and  good  man  is 
called  the  aristocrat  for  the  reason  that  he  is 
governed  by  the  moral  force  which  is  the  better 
of  the  two  halves  of  his  nature.  When  the  worse 
half  breaks  from  this  control  and  begins  to  act 
for  itself,  the  balance  of  the  soul  is  disturbed ;  but 
the  rebellious  desires  are  still  at  first  of  a  specious 
kind,  the  ambitions  of  elevated  rank  and  au- 
thority which  have  very  much  the  look  of  pure 
virtues.  The  next  step  is  taken  when  the  weight 
of  desire  passes  to  a  lower  form  of  ambition,  and 
the  man  begins  to  crave  money  as  the  material 
reality  beneath  everything  the  world  reverences. 
For  a  while  the  spendthrift  passions  are  held  in 


PSYCHOLOGY  121 

subjection  by  a  kind  of  mild  compulsion.  But 
this  balance  is  precarious;  the  desire  for  money, 
following  the  nature  of  any  desire,  grows  more 
and  more  excessive,  until  the  very  excess  leads  to 
a  revolt  of  the  other  desires.  Then  we  see  the 
emergence  of  the  distracted  soul,  across  which  all 
desires  move  with  equal  authority  and  to  which 
all  passions  are  in  turn  equally  alluring.  Again 
the  change  comes  from  the  tendency  to  unbridled 
expansion  which  is  in  the  very  nature  of  desire. 
Soon  there  is  a  contention  among  all  the  loosened 
passions,  until  some  one  evil  and  devouring  lust 
gathers  strength  above  its  rivals,  and  snatches  a 
despotism,  the  last  and  most  miserable  state  of  a 
man's  soul. 

Certainly  if  anything  is  evident  throughout 
the  whole  course  of  this  decline,  it  is  that  the  soul 
is  regarded  as  composed  of  two  warring  elements, 
and  that  the  descending  steps  are  measured  by 
the  degree  to  which  one  of  these  elements  throws 
off  obedience  to  the  other.  The  sum  of  the  mat- 
ter is  in  the  words  of  the  Laws:  "To  have  won  ssoc 
the  victory  over  pleasures,  this  is  to  live  happily, 
the  life  of  felicity,  but  to  fail  before  them  is  the 
very  opposite."  This  does  not  mean,  as  the  pre- 
ceding discussion  of  the  Laws  abundantly  proves, 
that  pleasure  is  in  itself  a  thing  to  be  scorned,  or 
is  in  its  nature  necessarily  destructive  of  happi- 
ness; but  it  does  mean  that  pleasure  may  on  oc- 
casion draw  us  away  from  our  true  goal,  and  that 


122  PLATONISM 

happiness  is  dependent  on  the  dominance  of  one 
member  of  the  soul  over  the  other. 

The  duahsm  of  Plato's  psychology  is  less  en- 
tangled in  other  Dialogues  where  the  classifica- 
tion of  the  virtues  does  not  come  so  prominent- 
ly into  view  as  in  The  Republic.  Thus,  in  the 
PhaedOy  it  falls  into  rather  a  harsh  opposition  be- 
tween the  soul  and  the  body  (soma  =  sema) ,  and 
in  this  form,  unfortunately,  it  was  to  be  taken  up 
by  the  Christian  Platonists  and  developed  into  an 
asceticism  which,  with  Plato,  had  been  only  a 
passing  phase  of  philosophic  bitterness.  It  is  to 
be  remembered,  also,  that  even  in  the  Phaedo  the 
"body"  is  really  not  so  much  the  material  flesh  as 
a  symbol  for  all  that  part  of  the  soul  which  is 
swayed  by  the  baser  desires.  For,  as  it  is  argued 
129E  ff.  in  the  first  Alcibiades,  a  man  is  a  different  thing 
from  the  body  which  he  uses,  neither  is  he  both 
body  and  soul,  but  soul ;  and  in  the  tenth  book  of 
The  Republic,  where  Plato  is  arguing  for  im- 
mortality, he  traces  the  source  of  evil  to  the  soul 
itself,  as  distinct  from  the  body,  with  no  uncer- 
tain note.  So  strong  is  this  thought  of  the  inner 
dualism  that  in  his  later  years  he  would  even 
speak  as  if  we  were  not  one  soul  but  two.  In  this 
way  his  dualism  colors  the  mythology  of  the 
Timaeus: 

69c  "He  himself  [God]  was  creator  of  the  divine, 
but  the  creation  of  the  mortal  he  laid  upon  his 
offspring  to  accomplish.    And  they,  in  imitation 


PSYCHOLOGY  123 

of  his  act,  took  from  him  the  immortal  element  of 
soul,  and  then  fashioned  about  her  a  mortal  body, 
and  gave  her  all  the  body  as  a  vehicle;  and  in  it 
they  framed  also  another  kind  of  soul,  which  is 
mortal,  having  in  itself  dreadful  and  compelling 
passions — pleasure  first,  the  greatest  incitement 
to  evil,  then  pains  that  frighten  away  good,  and 
besides  these  confidence  and  fear,  witless  counsel- 
lors both,  and  wrath  hard  to  appease,  and  allur- 
ing hope.  Having  mingled  these  with  irrational 
sensation  and  with  love  that  stops  at  nothing, 
they  composed  as  they  could  the  mortal  soul  of 
man." 

In  the  Laws,  by  a  change  of  allegory,  the  soul  896c  e. 
is  regarded  as  herself  the  creator,  instead  of  the 
created,  and  as  such  the  source  of  all  good  and 
evil  in  the  world,  of  what  is  beautiful  and  what  is 
ugly,  just  and  unjust.  From  her  proceed  the 
passions  and  powers  of  man,  and  from  her  pro- 
ceed the  motions  that  rule  the  heavens  and  every 
moving  creature — yet  not  from  one  soul  but  from 
two  souls,  the  beneficent  and  the  worker  of  all 
that  is  contrary. 

In  view  of  this  persistent  dualism  it  is  clear 
that  the  three  faculties  of  Plato's  psychology 
are  not  independently  co-operative  powers,  but 
merely  different  phases,  sometimes  sharply  dis- 
sociated, sometimes  merging  into  one  another,  of 
the  activity  of  what  we  may  call,  using  a  termin- 
ology strange  to  Plato,  the  personal  element  of 
our  being.    The  faculties  might  have  been  four 


124  PLATONISM 

or  five  or  any  other  number,  instead  of  three,  if 
the  analysis  of  the  virtues  had  been  carried  fur- 
ther— if,  for  instance,  bravery  had  been  subdi- 
vided into  endurance  and  aggressiveness.  The 
only  obscurity  in  this  scheme  is  chargeable  to 
Plato's  careless  treatment  of  the  word  "reason" 
when  he  passes  from  epistemology  to  ethics.  By 
employing  the  same  term  now  for  the  higher  of 
the  two  elements  of  the  soul,  and  now  for  the 
prudential  faculty  of  the  lower  element,  he  intro- 
duced, or  at  least  encouraged,  an  ambiguity  which 
has  never  to  this  day  been  piu-ged  from  the  body 
of  philosophy,  as  any  one  may  know  who  will 
trace  the  meaning  of  "reason"  and  "rational" 
through  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
down  into  modem  literature.  In  one  place  you 
will  find  Plato  drawing  the  reason  close  to  the 

411c  ff.  desires,  as  in  the  passage  of  The  Republic  which 
deals  with  education  under  the  two  heads  of 
"music"  (including  hterature,  etc.)  and  gynmas- 
tic.  Here  reason  and  the  concupiscent  faculty, 
taken  together  as  opposed  to  the  thymos,  have 
their  discipline  in  music,  whereas  the  thymos  is 

439«  ff.  fortified  by  gymnastic.  Yet  in  another  part  of 
the  same  Dialogue  the  thymos  is  regarded  as  the 
spirit  of  indignation  and  self-respect  which  is 
normally  on  the  side  of  judgment  against  the 
desires.  In  either  case  the  assimilation  of  the 
reason  whether  to  the  desires  or  to  the  thymos 
shows  that  we  have  to  do  here  with  a  prudential 


PSYCHOLOGY  126 

faculty  different  in  kind  from  reason  regarded 
as  an  element  of  the  soul  set  over  against  all  the 
practical  activities. 

A  hint  of  this  double  nature  of  reason  may  be 
found  in  the  most  picturesque  presentation  of 
Plato's  psychology — the  famous  metaphor  of  the 
chariot  in  the  Phaedrus.  Superficially,  the  divi-  246a  s. 
sion  is  tripartite,  as  made  by  the  driver,  repre- 
senting reason,  and  his  two  horses,  the  one  docile, 
the  other  self-willed;  but,  more  carefully  consid- 
ered, the  image  shows  the  usual  dualism  under  a 
novel  guise.  When  the  soul  comes  into  sight  of 
a  fair  and  beloved  object,  the  wild  horse  rushes 
forward  to  satisfy  his  base  lust,  dragging  along 
with  him  his  mate  (the  thymos,  as  instinctive  self- 
respect)  and  the  driver.  At  first  the  driver  and 
the  better  horse  resist  ineffectually ;  but  of  a  sud- 
den there  comes  to  the  driver  a  remembrance  of 
the  pure  eternal  beauty  he  has  beheld  in  a  pre- 
vious existence  with  the  gods,  and,  as  it  were, 
smitten  by  that  vision,  he  himself  is  thrown  back- 
wards and  pulls  both  the  horses  to  their  haunches. 
By  this  check  the  driver  and  the  docile  horse  gain 
control  of  the  concupiscent  beast,  and  the  soul  is 
turned  from  its  evil  deed.  The  power  of  resis- 
tance came  at  last,  not  from  the  driver  as  a  de- 
liberative agent,  but  from  the  knowledge  that 
belongs  to  a  diviner  reason,  and  strikes  into  him 
after  the  manner  of  the  Christian's  grace  of  God. 

But   Plato's   symbolism  is  interpreted  more 


1«6  PLATONISM 

Republic  439E  clcaply  by  the  story  of  a  certain  lieontius,  who, 
coming  up  to  the  city  one  day  by  the  north  wall, 
was  troubled  by  the  sight  of  some  dead  bodies 
lying  in  the  place  of  execution.  For  a  while  he 
was  divided  between  his  curiosity  and  a  feeling  of 
repulsion,  and  stood  with  closed  eyes,  debating 
with  himself.  But  at  last  his  desire  got  the  mas- 
tery, and,  forcing  open  his  eyes,  he  ran  up  to  the 
place,  crying,  "Look,  ye  wretches,  take  your  fill 
of  the  lovely  spectacle!"  The  moral  of  the  tale, 
Plato  adds,  is  the  distinction  between  the  thymos 
and  the  desires,  as  proved  by  their  enmity.  But 
it  suggests  something  more  than  that.  The  de- 
liberative pause  of  Leontius,  while  reason  and 
self-respect  are  contending  with  desire,  points  to 
the  function  of  that  element  of  the  soul,  whether 
it  be  called  reason  or  by  another  name,  which  is 
above  them  all,  and  upon  whose  exercise  rests 
the  possibility  of  forming  judgments  and  deter- 
mining our  actions.^     The  problem  of  Platonic 

^  Schleiermacher,  in  his  note  to  Republic  572a,  gives  a 
clear  statement  of  this  separate  governing  element  of  the 
soul:  "Ich  will  aber  hier,  wenn  auch  nur  im  Vorbeigehen, 
aufmerksam  darauf  machen,  wie  ausser  den  dreien,  dem  be- 
gehrlichen,  dem  eifrigen  und  dem  verniinftigen,  noeh  ein 
vierter,  namlich  der  von  jenen  dreien  bald  dieses  bald  jenes 
beschwichtigende  oder  aufregende  sich  einschleicht;  so  dass 
nun  dieser  hier  der  Fuhrmann  wird,  und  wir  ein  Dreige- 
spann  haben  nebst  einem  Fuhrmann,  wie  es  scheint,  indem 
was  im  Phaidros  der  Fuhrmann  war,  hier  als  Ross  erscheint, 
und  zwar  nicht  in  einer  in  gleichem  Grade  bildlichen  Dar- 
stellung." — This  is  good  Platonism,  except  that  Schleier- 


PSYCHOLOGY  127 

psychology  is  to  define,  or  at  least  to  understand 
as  clearly  as  may  be  possible,  the  operation  of 
this  dualism.  In  a  general  way  the  substratum 
of  the  lower  element  of  the  soul  is  easily  found  in 
the  desires  and  emotions  (the  thymos  is,  succinct- 
ly, the  desires  as  these  assume  the  guise  of  per- 
sonal emotions) ;  the  difficulty  is  in  coming  to 
terms  with  the  higher  element. 

It  is  tempting  to  associate  this  governing  prin- 
ciple with  the  free  will,  or  liberum  arhitrium, 
which  has  been  a  theme  of  metaphysical  debate 
ever  since  it  was  brought  into  prominence  by  the 
contest  of  the  orthodox  Church  with  the  Pelag- 
ians; and  there  is,  perhaps,  no  better  way  to  ob- 
tain a  clear  notion  of  the  intention  of  Plato's  psy- 
chology than  by  turning  aside  for  a  moment  to 
the  last  great  discussion  of  this  question  in  mod- 
ern times.  For  the  support  of  the  Calvinistic 
doctrine  of  predestination  against  the  Pelagian 
error  of  the  Arminians,  Jonathan  Edwards  had, 
in  his  Treatise  Concerning  Human  Affections, 
denied  the  existence  of  any  such  faculty  as  the 
will  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  word.  The  will, 
or  the  heart  as  he  calls  it,  is  merely  the  inclination 
of  the  soul  towards  the  good  as  this  is  present  to 
us  at  the  moment  of  action.  This  thesis  was  later 
taken  up  and  developed  in  his  inquiry  into  the 

macher's  aufregende,  though  a  literal  translation  of  Plato's 
Kivrjaa<;,  shows,  as  I  hope  to  prove,  a  mistaken  notion  of  the 
action  of  the  governing  faculty. 


188  PLATONISM 

Freedom  of  the  Will,  Here,  to  clinch  his  argu- 
ment for  the  identity  of  will  and  inclination,  he 
uses  the  illustration  of  a  drunkard  who  has  liquor 
before  him  and  must  choose  whether  to  drink  or 
not;  and  he  proves  that  the  so-called  volition  of 
the  drunkard  will  certainly  be  in  accord  vrith 
"what,  in  the  present  view  of  his  mind,  taken  in 
the  whole  of  it,  is  most  agreeable  to  him."  That 
is  well;  and  so  far  Plato  would  assent,  for  there 
is  no  place  in  his  psychology,  any  more  than  in 
the  theology  of  Calvin,  for  a  positive  faculty  of 
the  will  as  a  force  independent  of  our  inclination. 
But  Edwards  failed  to  discriminate  sufficiently 
between  two  classes  of  motives  impelling  a  man 
to  action :  the  inamediate  physical  craving  and  the 
memory  of  pains  and  pleasures  stored  up  in  the 
mind  by  experience.  Now,  these  latter  are  more 
sluggish  in  operation  than  the  former;  they  are 
at  a  disadvantage,  so  to  speak,  unless  the  phys- 
ical desire  is  held  in  check  imtil  they  acquire  a 
kind  of  cimiulative  weight.  The  liberty  of  the 
soul  might  thus  appear  to  reside,  not  in  the  de- 
termination of  a  positive  will — ^which  must  in- 
deed obey  the  strongest  motive  at  the  moment  of 
action — but  in  the  power  of  holding  all  motives 
in  suspense  until  a  due  balance  has  been  struck. 

In  fact  the  theory  did  come  to  Edwards  in  just 
this  form,  and  in  two  sections  of  his  Inquiry  he 
makes  a  diversion  from  his  main  argument  to 
consider  it.    The  actual  treatise  against  which  he 


PSYCHOLOGY  129 

directs  his  contentions,  though  he  does  not  name 
it,  was  undoubtedly  Isaac  Watts's  Essay  on  the 
Freedom  of  Will  in  God  and  the  Creature;  but 
the  theory  itself  has  stronger  authorities  behind 
it  than  this  mild  Arminian,  and  needs  to  be  con- 
sidered historically.  Its  lineage  goes  back  to 
Descartes. 

The  Cartesian  philosophy  made  no  generic  dis- 
tinction between  the  will  and  the  understanding; 
it  regarded  the  will  as  the  act  of  selection  among 
the  various  data  of  the  senses,  by  which  act  we 
form  the  ideas  in  the  understanding.  The  sen- 
sations themselves  are  not  deceptive,  and  if  we 
fall  into  error,  it  is  because  the  will  draws  infer- 
ences and  makes  inadequate  judgments.  Truth 
is  measured  by  the  clearness  of  our  ideas,  and 
right  action  is  dependent  on  the  truth  of  the  ideas 
behind  it. 

Malebranche  also  taught  that  we  act  in  ac- 
cordance with  our  inclinations  and  that  our  incli- 
nations are  the  result  of  our  judgments;  but  he 
goes  beyond  Descartes  in  his  ethical  deductions. 
Error,  he  thinks,  is  due  to  the  inherent  restless- 
ness of  the  human  will,  which  is  drawn  to  the 
multiplicity  and  vanity  of  sensible  objects,  and 
so  fails  to  make  true  judgments  of  the  value  of 
things.  Hence  the  process  of  attaining  a  true 
judgment  is  by  an  act  of  attention  on  the  part  of 
the  mind;^  and  hence,  also,  the  general  law  of 

'  Recherche  de  la  Verite,  Preface. 


180  PLATONISM 

truth  and  conduct:  "We  should  never  give  our 
entire  assent  except  to  propositions  which  appear 
so  evidently  true  that  we  cannot  reject  them  with- 
out feeling  an  inner  pain  and  the  secret  reproach 
of  reason ;  that  is  to  say,  without  knowing  clearly 
that  our  unwillingness  to  assent  would  be  an 
abuse  of  our  liberty."^ 

The  idealism  of  Malebranche,  variously  mod- 
ified in  the  transit,  was  brought  into  England  by 
John  Norris,  who,  though  himself  an  Oxonian, 
forms  an  interesting  link  between  the  Cambridge 
Platonists  of  the  seventeenth  century  and  the 
deistic  writers  of  the  eighteenth.  He  takes,  for 
our  purpose,  an  important  step  forwards  by  as- 
sociating Malebranche's  "act  of  attention"  ex- 
plicitly with  the  problem  of  the  freedom  of  the 
will/  The  place  of  Norris  in  English  philosophy 
has  received  such  scant  consideration  that  it  may 
be  worth  while  to  quote  from  him  at  some  length 
on  this  point : 

"In  the  first  place  'tis  agreed  betwixt  us  that 
there  must  be  a  to  ephf  hemiiij  some  principle  of 

^  Ibid.  I,  ii,  4 ;  repeated,  VI,  i. 

*  The  connection  between  attention  and  liberty  is,  no 
doubt,  implicit  in  Malebranche.  Thus  he  says  (I,  i,  2)  that 
liberty  consists  in  the  "ability  to  suspend  one's  judgment 
and  one's  love,"  and  "to  make  our  natural  inclinations  ter- 
minate in  some  particular  object."  But  I  do  not  remember 
that  he  has  brought  this  notion  of  attention  and  liberty  to 
bear  clearly  on  the  problem  of  the  freedom  of  the  will,  and 
passages  of  the  sixth  book  place  the  act  of  attention  itself  in 
a  secondary,  or  at  least  an  ambiguous,  position. 


PSYCHOLOGY  ISl 

free  agency  in  man.  All  that  does  or  can  fall  un- 
der debate  is  what  is  the  primary  and  immediate 
subject  of  this  free  agency.  Now  this,  being  a  ra- 
tional perfection,  must  be  primarily  subjected 
either  in  the  understanding  or  in  the  will,  or,  to 
speak  more  accurately,  either  in  the  soul  as  in- 
telligent or  in  the  soul  as  volent.  That  the  latter 
cannot  be  the  root  of  liberty  will  be  sufficiently 
clear  if  this  one  proposition  be  fully  made  out, 
viz.,  that  the  will  necessarily  follows  the  dictate 
of  the  understanding,  or  that  the  soul  necessarily 
wills  as  she  understands. 

"Now  for  the  demonstration  of  this,  I  shall  de- 
sire but  this  one  postulatum,  which  I  think  all  the 
schools  of  learning  will  allow  me,  viz.,  that  the 
object  of  the  soul  as  volent  is  apparent  good,  or 
that  the  soul  cannot  will  evil  as  evil.  Now  good 
apparent,  or  evil  apparent,  is  the  same  in  other 
terms  with  that  which  is  apprehended  or  judged 
to  be  good  or  evil  respectively.  ...  If,  there- 
fore, good  apparent  be  the  object  of  the  will, 
good  apprehended  will  be  so  too,  and  consequent- 
ly the  soul  necessarily  wills  as  she  imderstands; 
otherwise  she  will  choose  evil  as  evil,  which  is 
against  the  supposition.  .  .  . 

"The  soul,  therefore,  as  volent  cannot  be  the 
immediate  subject  of  liberty.  If,  therefore,  there 
be  any  such  thing  as  free  agency,  the  seat  of  it 
must  be  in  the  soul  as  intelligent.  But,  does  not 
the  soul  necessarily  understand  as  the  object  ap- 
pears, as  well  as  she  necessarily  wills  as  she  un- 
derstands?   She  does  so,  and  therefore  I  do  not 


132  PLATONISM 

place  the  seat  of  liberty  in  the  soul  as  judging, 
or  forming  a  judgment,  for  that  I  confess  to  be 
determined  by  the  appearance  of  things.  But, 
though  it  be  necessary  that  the  soul  judge  as 
things  appear,  yet  'tis  not  necessary  ( except  only 
in  self-evident  propositions)  that  things  should 
appear  thus  or  thus,  but  that  will  wholly  depend 
upon  the  degrees  of  advertency,  or  attention; 
such  a  degree  being  requisite  to  make  the  object 
appear  thus,  and  such  a  degree  to  appear  other- 
wise. And  this  advertency  is  that  wherein  I 
place  the  seat  of  free  agency.  Lower  than  this  I 
discern  not  the  least  glimpse  of  it,  and  higher  I 
cannot  go.  Here,  therefore,  I  conceive  I  have 
good  reason  to  fix,  and  to  affirm  that  the  only 
auteocousion  of  the  soul  consists  in  her  having  an 
immediate  power  to  attend  or  not  attend,  or  to 
attend  more  or  less.  I  say  an  immediate  power ; 
for  if  you  will  have  an  express  act  of  the  will 
interposed,  that  act  of  the  will  must  have  a  prac- 
tical judgment,  that  judgment  an  objective  ap- 
pearance, that  appearance  another  attention,  that 
attention  another  will,  and  so  on  ad  infinitum.  I 
think  it  therefore  reasonable  to  stop  at  the  first." 

These  passages  occur  in  Norris's  reply  (un- 
dated) to  a  letter  of  Henry  More's  dated  Janu- 
ary 16,  1685/6,  but  the  correspondence  was  not 
printed  until  1688,  when  it  formed  a  supplement 
to  Norris's  Theory  and  Regulation  of  Love.* 
Locke's  Essay  appeared  two  years  after  the  pub- 

"  I  quote  from  the  second  edition,  1694. 


PSYCHOLOGY  183 

lication  of  this  correspondence,  and  it  is  a  nice 
question  to  guess  whether  he  had  felt  the  influ- 
ence of  Norris's  theory.  The  writer  of  the  letter 
he  afterwards  characterized  as  "an  obscure  en- 
thusiastic gentleman,"  nor  was  he  at  all  of  the 
school  of  Malebranche ;  yet  one  of  the  most  strik- 
ing chapters  of  the  Essay  (I,  xxi)  is  substantially 
a  development  of  the  Norrisian  conception  of 
free  will  and  attention. 

Locke  starts  with  a  thoroughly  hedonistic  con- 
ception of  life.  That  which  is  properly  good  or 
bad,  he  says,  is  nothing  but  barely  pleasure  or 
pain,  the  distinction,  of  course,  being  carried  into 
the  distant  consequences  of  our  acts.  Happiness 
is  not  different  in  kind  from  pleasure,  but  is 
merely  the  utmost  pleasure  we  are  capable  of, 
and  misery  the  utmost  pain.  All  men  naturally 
desire  happiness,  and  would  always  act  with  this 
end  in  view,  were  will  and  desire  the  same  thing. 
But  the  will  is  perfectly  distinguished  from  de- 
sire ;  it  is  determined  not  by  what  we  desire,  that 
is  happiness,  but  by  the  most  important  and 
urgent  imeasiness  we  at  any  time  feel.  And  this 
follows  from  the  nature  of  our  happiness  and 
misery.  All  present  pain,  whatever  it  be,  makes 
a  part  of  our  present  misery ;  but  all  absent  good 
does  not  at  any  time  make  a  necessary  part  of  our 
present  happiness,  nor  does  the  absence  of  it 
make  a  part  of  our  misery.  On  the  other  hand 
change  itself  is  attended  with  some  uneasiness; 


184  PLATONISM 

so  that,  unless  the  absence  of  good  in  some  way  is 
made  present  to  us  by  a  feeling  of  uneasiness,  it 
does  not  move  us  to  change  our  conduct.  Thus, 
all  men  desire  happiness,  but  when  they  are  rid 
of  pain  they  are  apt  to  take  up  with  the  pleasure 
at  hand. 

Wherein  then  does  liberty  consist?  It  is  not 
in  desire,  for  it  is  a  necessity  of  our  nature  to 
desire  happiness.  Nor  is  it,  properly  speaking, 
in  the  will;  for  freedom  of  the  will  is  merely  an 
external  consideration,  being  the  absence  of  any 
restraint  preventing  us  from  acting  in  accordance 
with  the  impulsion  of  present  uneasiness.  The 
place  of  liberty  is  in  the  mind,  or,  following 
Locke's  own  terminology,  it  is  and  it  is  not  in  the 
will.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  Essay  here  admits 
into  the  discussion  a  confusion  of  terms  of  which 
Edwards  was  not  slow  to  take  advantage.  In 
one  place  Locke  says  that  the  "power  which  the 
mind  has  thus  to  order  the  consideration  of  any 
idea,  or  the  forbearing  to  consider  it,  .  .  .  is  that 
which  we  call  the  will";  but  elsewhere  he  takes 
the  position,  more  consistent  with  his  general  sys- 
tem, that  a  man  is  "determined  in  willing  by  his 
own  thought  and  judgment  what  is  best  for  him 
to  do."  The  will  is  evidently  taken  in  two  ways, 
first  as  a  power  of  directing  our  thought,  which  is 
a  matter  of  internal  liberty;  and  secondly  as  a 
power  of  acting  in  accordance  with  our  thought, 
which  is  an  internal  necessity  and  a  matter  of 


PSYCHOLOGY  135 

external  liberty  conditioned  by  circumstances. 
The  power  of  directing  our  thought  should  in 
fact  not  have  been  called  the  will  at  all  (unless, 
at  least,  it  was  distinguished,  by  some  such  phrase 
as  the  will  to  refrain^  from  the  positive  will  as 
ordinarily  conceived) ;  nor  is  it  rightly  identified 
with  the  mind,  but  is  above  the  mind  and  purely 
negative  in  character. 

Now  it  may  sound  strange  to  use  the  attribute 
"negative  of  that  higher  power  in  which  our  lib- 
erty resides."  It  is  so  termed  because,  as  Locke 
himself  says,  it  is  the  power  within  the  mind  to 
suspend  the  execution  and  satisfaction  of  any  of 
its  desires,  and  the  consequent  liberty  to  consider 
the  objects  of  all  the  desires  and  weigh  them  one 
against  the  other.  "In  this,"  he  continues,  "lies 
the  liberty  man  has ;  and  from  the  not  using  of  it 
right  comes  all  that  variety  of  mistakes,  errors, 
and  faults  which  we  run  into  in  the  conduct  of 
our  lives,  and  our  endeavours  after  happiness; 
whilst  we  precipitate  the  determination  of  our 
wills,  and  engage  too  soon  before  due  examina- 
tion. To  prevent  this,  we  have  a  power  to  sus- 
pend the  prosecution  of  this  or  that  desire,  as 
every  one  daily  may  experiment  in  himself.  This 
seems  to  me  the  source  of  all  liberty ;  in  this  seems 
to  consist  that  which  is  (as  I  think  improperly) 
called  free-will.  For  during  this  suspension  of 
any  desire,  before  the  will  be  determined  to  ac- 
tion, and  the  action  (which  follows  that  determi- 


136  PLATONISM 

nation)  done,  we  have  opportunity  to  examine, 
view  and  judge  of  the  good  or  evil  of  what  we 
are  going  to  do;  and  when,  upon  due  examina- 
tion, we  have  judged,  we  have  done  our  duty,  all 
that  we  can  or  ought  to  do  in  pursuit  of  our  hap- 
piness; and  it  is  not  a  fault,  but  a  perfection  of 
our  nature,  to  desire,  will,  and  act  according  to 
the  last  result  of  a  fair  examination." 

Locke's  view  of  liberty,  then,  is  essentially  the 
same  as  Norris's:  liberty  is  the  power  of  atten- 
tion, by  which  we  may  bring  the  ideas  of  absent 
good  and  future  pleasure  and  of  evil  and  pain 
into  the  mind  in  such  a  way  that  they  may  com- 
pete with  the  pressure  of  immediate  pleasure  or 
uneasiness.  It  is,  to  go  back  to  Descartes,  the 
power  to  form  clear  and  adequate  judgments. 
But  by  regarding  this  power  negatively,  as  a 
mere  act  of  suspension,  he  has  given  it  a  pro- 
founder  and  truer  psychological  standing  as  an. 
element  of  the  soul  apart  from  that  other  element 
which  reasons  and  remembers  and  desires.  He 
makes  it  the  inhibiting  check  by  virtue  of  which 
reason  and  memory  and  desire  are  enabled  to  ar- 
rive at  a  proper  balance  and  to  result  in  right  con- 
duct. Locke,  however,  did  not  perceive,  or  per- 
ceiving shirked,  the  radical  conclusions  that  ought 
to  follow  his  theory.  Otherwise  he  would  not 
have  clung  to  the  hedonism  which  regards  happi- 
ness as  nothing  more  than  the  sum  of  pleasure, 
but  would  have  distinguished  generically  between 


PSYCHOLOGY  187 

happiness  and  pleasure,  attributing  happiness  to 
that  element  of  our  being  which  gives  us  the 
power  of  suspension,  and  leaving  pleasure  to  the 
consequences  of  our  particular  course  of  action. 
Some  inkHng  of  this  distinction  he  seems  to  have 
had  when  to  the  ordinary  balance  of  calculable 
pleasures  and  pains  he  added  the  hope  and  fear 
of  eternal  happiness  or  misery  in  another  hfe. 
"But  when,"  he  says,  "infinite  happiness  is  put 
into  one  scale,  against  infinite  misery  in  the  other, 
if  the  worst  that  comes  to  the  pious  man,  if  he 
mistakes,  be  the  best  that  the  wicked  man  can 
attain  to  if  he  be  in  the  right,  who  can  without 
madness  nm  into  the  venture?"  Heaven  and 
hell,  as  the  reward  attached  to  the  moral  state  of 
the  soul  rather  than  to  the  particular  virtue  or 
vice  of  our  conduct,  are,  in  fact,  the  mythological 
equivalent  for  Plato's  philosophical  distinction 
between  happiness  and  pleasure,  misery  and  pain. 
But  from  the  attainment  of  this  deeper  insight 
Locke  was  prevented  by  the  whole  weight  of  his 
sensational  system. 

Locke's  presentation  of  the  problem  of  freedom 
came  to  Edwards  apparently,  as  I  have  said, 
through  the  mediation  of  Watts.  With  the  con- 
tentions of  the  ordinary  Arminians,  who  insisted 
on  a  separation  between  will  and  inclination  and 
sought  for  the  source  of  evil  in  a  voluntary 
choice  of  action  contrary  to  known  good  and  hap- 
piness, the  Puritan  divine  had  an  easy  task;  and 


188  PLATONISM 

from  this  point  of  view  his  argument  against  free- 
will ("improperly"  so-called,  as  Locke  declared) 
has  never  been  answered.  But  with  the  theory 
as  developed  by  Descartes,  Malebranche,  Norris, 
and  Locke  his  path  was  not  so  smooth.  Twice, 
as  I  have  said,  he  undertook  to  reply  to  Watts, 
without  naming  him,  and  once  he  struck  at  the 
heart  of  the  question,  declaring  that  "this  suspen- 
sion of  volition,  if  there  be  properly  any  such 
thing,  is  itself  an  act  of  volition" — with  the  ob- 
vious conclusions.  To  this  objection  Norris  had 
already  replied;  but  our  Arminian  might  have 
argued  further  that  the  act  of  suspension,  or  will 
to  refrain,  really  implies  an  essentially  different 
order  of  choice  from  that  of  the  positive  will,  or 
inclination.  Two  desires  are  not  set  before  it  to 
choose  between,  but  the  purpose  to  be  self-de- 
termined or  not,  the  intention  to  be  in  a  state  to 
choose  wisely  or  not;  the  actual  choice  of  one 
course  of  action  or  another  must  come  after  the 
suspension  is  made,  and  is  the  work  of  the  imag- 
ination and  the  discursive  reason  balanced  against 
a  present  desire.  Returning  again  to  the  ques- 
tion whether  our  freedom  depends  on  an  act  of 
suspension  apart  from  the  positive  will,  Edwards 
endeavours  to  evade  it  by  pointing  to  its  moral 
implication.  "If,"  he  says,  "determining  thus  to 
suspend  and  consider  be  that  act  of  the  will 
wherein  alone  liberty  is  exercised,  then  in  this 
all  virtue  and  vice  must  consist.  .  .  .  According 


PSYCHOLOGY  189 

to  such  a  supposition  the  most  horrid  crimes, 
adultery,  murder,  sodomy,  blasphemy,  &c.,  do  not 
at  all  consist  in  the  horrid  nature  of  the  things 
themselves,  but  only  in  the  neglect  of  thorough 
consideration  before  they  were  perpetrated, 
which  brings  their  viciousness  to  a  small  matter 
and  makes  all  crimes  equal."  To  which  the 
Arminian  might  have  retorted  by  distinguishing 
between  the  moral  state  of  the  agent,  which  de- 
pends on  the  degree  of  his  self-control,  and  the 
virtue  or  vice  of  any  particular  act,  which  de- 
pends on  the  pleasure  or  pain  ultimately  result- 
ing from  the  act. 

Now,  however  Plato's  psychological  termin- 
ology may  vary  from  Dialogue  to  Dialogue,  or 
from  page  to  page,  there  is  always  in  the  back- 
ground of  his  ethics  this  notion  of  the  governing 
element  of  the  soul  as  an  absolute  inhibition,  or 
power  of  suspension.  And  despite  the  differ- 
ences of  time  and  circumstance,  his  path  to  this 
position  was  very  much  like  that  traversed  by  the 
French  and  English  philosophers.  We  can  see 
this  in  his  recourse  to  the  same  illustration  as  that 
afterwards  employed  by  Locke  and  Edwards. 
In  The  Republic  he  analyses  the  state  of  a  man  473b  s 
who  feels  a  desire  to  drink  but  is  restrained  by 
thought  of  the  remoter  consequences.  At  first 
reading,  the  reason,  as  the  restraining  faculty, 
might  seem  to  be  merely  one  impulse  (to  kdluon) 
opposing  another  (to  keleuon) ;  but  look  more 


140  PLATONISM 

attentively  and  you  will  detect  here,  in  the  usual 
double  twist  of  the  word  "reason"  when  apphed 
by  Plato  to  ethical  matters,  precisely  the  Lockian 
point  of  view  against  which  the  Edwardsian 
argument  for  predestination  finally  broke.  Rea- 
son, on  the  one  hand,  is  a  realizing  sense  of  the 
future  as  contrasted  with  the  present  craving,  but 
it  is  also  something  above  both  these  contending 
inclinations,  a  something  which  forbids  one  of 
them  from  encroaching  on  the  province  of  the 
other,  and  by  holding  them  in  leash  makes  possi- 
ble a  proper  balance  and  control.  This  concep- 
tion of  the  higher  reason  is,  it  must  be  admitted, 
rather  latent  than  explicit  in  these  passages  of 
The  Republic,  but  no  room  is  left  for  doubting 
Plato's  meaning  if  we  take  into  account  his  de- 
velopment of  the  Socratic  self-knowledge  on  its 
sceptical,  inhibitive  side.  "To  seem  to  know,"  says 

229c  Plato  in  the  Sophist,  "when  we  do  not  know,  is  the 
source  of  those  errors  in  judgment  to  which  we 
are  all  prone";  and  further,  in  the  first  Alcihia- 

n7D  des:'^  "Through  this  same  ignorance,  which  leads 
us  to  think  we  know  when  we  do  not  know,  come 
our  errors  of  practice."  That  is  Plato's  way  of 
expressing  Malebranche's  first  law  of  judgment 
and  conduct  and  Locke's  theory  of  suspension. 

*  Whether  genuine  or  not,  I  have  not  scrupled  to  use  this 
and  other  passages  of  the  first  Alcibiades  as  thoroughly  Pla- 
tonic in  conception.  They  could  be  abundantly  confirmed 
from  the  Dialogues  of  unquestioned  authenticity. 


PSYCHOLOGY  141 

And  Plato  owes  his  supremacy  in  the  world  of 
thought  to  the  consistency  of  his  insight  where  his 
great  successors  drew  back  in  a  kind  of  meta- 
physical alarm.  The  Lockian  position  presup- 
poses a  radical  duahsm,  and  has  no  real  validity 
against  predestinarianism,  or  any  other  form  of 
determinism,  unless  this  foundation  is  accepted, 
with  all  its  consequences.  It  was  because  Locke, 
led  astray  by  his  sensational  philosophy,  failed  to 
develop  this  truth  that  his  theory  of  freedom 
misses  logical  finality  and  has  been  forgotten 
or  rejected  by  most  modem  psychologists.  In 
like  manner  Malebranche,  though  he  took  the 
opposite  direction  from  Locke's,  lost  his  splen- 
did opportunity  because,  in  his  effort  to  escape 
the  mechanical  dualism  of  Descartes,  he  fell 
into  the  abyss  of  pantheism.  It  was  just  here 
that  Plato  showed  the  depth  and  courage  of 
his  conviction,  by  the  thoroughgoing  dualism 
of  his  philosophy.  He  was,  mainly,  I  think, 
kept  in  the  strait  and  narrow  path  by  fidelity 
to  his  master;  and  to  understand  the  nature 
of  that  element  of  the  soul  in  which  he  placed 
human  freedom  and  morality,  we  have  yet  to  see 
how  it  is  related  to  the  most  singular,  and  to  some 
persons  the  most  puzzling,  aspect  of  Socrates' 
religious  conviction. 

There  is  a  beautiful  passage  in  the  fourth  book 
of  the  Memorabilia  which  rises  in  tone  above  the 
usual  wont  of  Xenophon,  as  if  he  were  here  writ- 


142  PLATONISM 

ing  of  things  he  but  half  comprehended.  So- 
crates has  been  expounding  the  many  gracious 
bounties  bestowed  by  the  gods  upon  mankind, 
and  concludes  with  the  supreme  gift  of -reason 
and  discourse  by  which  men  are  distinguished 
from  animals.  "And  more,"  he  adds,  "when  we 
are  unable  to  foresee  what  is  advantageous  for  us 
in  the  future,  the  gods  are  still  with  us,  telling  us, 
if  we  consult  them,  of  things  to  come  by  the  voice 
of  prophecy,  and  teaching  us  what  is  best."  "But 
with  you,  Socrates,"  his  interlocutor  replies,  "they 
seem  to  deal  more  kindly  than  with  other  men, 
since  even  without  your  asking  they  forewarn 
you  of  what  should  be  done  and  what  not."  And 
Socrates  acknowledges  the  truth  of  this  favour, 
but  declares  that  another  man  may  attain  to  the 
same  harmony  with  the  divine,  "if  he  will  not 
wait  to  see  the  gods  in  their  actual  forms,  but  will 
be  content,  discerning  their  works,  to  honour  and 
worship  them."  "For  consider  but  the  soul  of 
man,"  he  continues,  "which,  if  it  can  be  said  of 
anything  human,  partakes  of  the  divine;  mani- 
festly it  rules  in  us  as  a  king,  yet  is  not  seen  at 
all.  Whence  we  should  learn  not  to  despise 
things  invisible,  but  from  their  acts  should  infer 
their  power,  and  so  do  honovu*  to  the  divine  imma- 
nence \_to  daimonion].'" 

This  reverential  regard  for  the  daemonic  guid- 
ance was,  in  fact,  the  religion  of  Socrates.  One 
of  the  clauses  of  the  indictment  against  him,  it 


PSYCHOLOGY  143 

will  be  remembered,  was  that  he  denied  the  gods 
of  the  city,  and  introduced  strange  daemonic 
powers  of  his  own.  To  this  charge  Xenophon 
replied -by  a  flat  contradiction,  avowing  that  So- 
crates not  only  himself  observed  carefully  the  offi- 
cial worship  but  taught  others  to  look  for  the  will 
of  the  gods  in  what  we  should  now  term  the  State 
religion.  Plato  took  a  double  course  with  the  ac- 
cusation. First  he  leads  the  plaintiff  in  the  trial 
to  widen  the  charge  so  as  to  embrace  pure  athe- 
ism, and  then  pounces  on  the  absurdity  of  indict- 
ing the  same  man  for  denying  the  existence  of 
gods  and  for  introducing  new  gods.  Secondly, 
he  brings  into  view  the  innocence  and  genuine 
piety  of  the  Socratic  faith.  Now  the  truth  of  the 
matter  would  seem  to  be  this:  though  there  is 
every  reason  to  believe  that  Socrates,  like  Plato 
after  him,  conformed  in  the  main  to  the  common 
religious  practices  of  the  day,  being  too  sincerely 
sceptical  to  set  up  the  dictates  of  private  doubt 
against  the  intuition  that  might  lie  half -concealed 
in  the  popular  myths,  yet  he  was  in  the  deepest 
sense  of  the  word  an  innovator.  However  clum- 
sily his  accusers  may  have  formulated  their  in- 
dictment, and  whatever  political  aim  they  may 
have  had  in  view,  they  were  right  in  seeing  this. 
The  daemonic  voice,  or  divine  immanence,  to 
which  Socrates  yielded  perfect  obedience,  may 
not  have  been  a  strange  god  added  to  the  pan- 
theon, as  his  enemies  asserted,  but  it  did  bring  a 


144  PLATONISM 

new  and  strange  faith  into  Athens  and  the  world, 

Republic  496c  the  faith  of  philosophy. 

Many  men  since  that  day  have  asked  them- 
selves what  this  portent  might  be;  some  have 
wondered  reverentially,  and  some  have  scoffed  at 
Socrates  as  an  ordinary  dupe  of  fanaticism  if  not 
the  victim  of  an  epileptic  delusion.  Plato,  ap- 
parently having  no  direct  cue  from  his  master, 
interpreted  the  phenomenon  in  various  ways.  At 
one  time  he  speaks  of  the  daemon,  or,  more 
vaguely,  the  daemonic,  as  if  it  were  merely  the 
spark  of  divine  intelligence  implanted  by  God  in 
every  soul.  Again  it  might  be  an  exclusive  gift 
to  Socrates  and,  possibly,  to  some  few  others. 
Besides  its  looser  kinship  with  the  divine,  it  might 
appear  as  Socrates'  "guardian,  a  very  god,"  or, 
more  bravely,  as  "God."  At  other  times  the  my- 
thological symbolism,  if  we  may  so  call  it,  falls 
away,  and  leaves  the  naked  spirit  of  the  man,  as 
it  were  the  higher  self  speaking  to  the  lower.    So 

Hippias  Major  ^hcu  Socratcs  contrasts  his  own  hesitating  ways 

304b  298b 

with  the  magnificent  assurance  of  one  of  the 
sophists,  he  ascribes  the  cause  of  his  embarrass- 
ment to  some  daemonic  chance,  or  fortune,  that 
has  taken  possession  of  him.  If  he  heeds  the  bid- 
ding of  this  power  and  refrains  from  everything 
but  the  search  for  truth,  then  the  mighty  men  of 
/  the  tongue  deride  his  incompetence ;  and  if  he 
hearkens  to  them  and  regards  truth  as  a  minor 
matter  in  comparison  with  success,  then  he  must 


PSYCHOLOGY  145 

listen  to  all  sorts  of  reproaches  from  a  man  who 
is  always  standing  by  to  expose  him.  This  fel- 
low, he  says,  is  closely  related  to  him  and  lives 
in  the  same  house  with  him;  and  when  he  goes 
home,  scolds  him  in  private.  And  who  is  this 
troublesome  spy  whom  nothing  can  escape  ?  Why, 
it  is  just  Socrates,  the  son  of  Sophroniscus ! 

All  this  is  very  tantalizing  for  those  scholars 
who  must  put  a  ticket  and  a  name  on  everything. 
But  one  fact  is  certain:  whether  it  be  a  god,  or 
very  God,  or  the  man's  self,  or  some  less  defin- 
able intimation  of  the  divine  will,  the  daemonic 
guide  invariably  takes  the  form  of  an  inhibition, 
and  never  of  a  positive  command.  On  this  one 
point  Plato,  whom  we  may  trust  in  such  a  matter 
above  Xenophon,  leaves  us  in  no  doubt  whatever : 
"From  childhood  it  has  been  with  me,"  Plato 
makes  Socrates  say  in  the  Apology,  "as  it  were  a  am 
voice  speaking  at  intervals,  always  warning  me 
against  something  I  had  in  mind  to  do,  never 
urging  me  to  act."  It  was  this  inhibitive  aspect 
of  the  Socratic  religion  which  Plato  never  forgot, 
and  which  justifies  us  in  connecting  the  daemonic 
admonition  symbollically  with  the  principle  of 
liberty  and  morality  in  the  Platonic  psychology. 
There  is  a  phrase  in  the  first  Dialogue  with  AJ-  iosa 
cibiades,  whether  Plato's  or  some  good  Platon- 
ist's,  which  I  have  always  cherished  as  a  pecu- 
liarly happy  attempt  to  name  the  unnamable. 
Socrates  is  explaining  to  the  petulant  youth  why 


146  PLATONISM 

for  so  many  years,  while  other  admirers  were  pay- 
ing assiduous  court,  he  alone  has  refrained  until 
now.  "The  cause,"  he  declares,  "was  nothing 
human,  but  some  daemonic  check  (daimonion 
enantioma)  ''  The  incident  is  trivial;  but  in 
these  words  I  seem  to  see  the  Socratic  religion 
and  the  Platonic  philosophy  bound  together  by 
an  indissoluble  bond.  We  may  not  know  what 
this  daemonic  or,  as  I  have  elsewhere  translated 
it,  this  inner  check  is ;  we  may  not  know  why  and 
how  it  acts,  or  why  it  does  not  act,  but  we  do 
know  that  the  clarity  of  our  spiritual  perception 
and  the  assurance  of  our  freedom  depend  on 
keeping  this  will  to  refrain  distinct  from  any 
conception  of  the  will  as  a  positive  force. 

We  touch  here  on  the  mystery  of  the  spiritual 
life.  Men  are  loath  to  accept  this  purely  nega- 
tive view  of  what  is  highest  in  their  being;  every 
instinct  of  the  concupiscent  soul  cries  out  against 
this  complete  severance  between  the  law  of  the 
spirit  and  the  law  of  nature,  and  the  human  heart 
revolts  from  it  with  all  the  energy  and  the  tenac- 
ity of  its  craving  for  flattery.  Men  argue  in  their 
calmer  moods  that  such  a  philosophy  leads  no- 
where save  to  utter  abnegation  of  life  and  to  a 
quietism  that  promises  only  the  peace  of  death. 
In  their  moments  of  exaltation  they  appeal  to  the 
stronger  emotions  and,  as  they  think,  deeper  con- 
solations of  a  religion  that  clings  to  faith  in  a  per- 
sonal God  who  has  manifested  himself  in  human 


PSYCHOLOGY  147 

form  with  passions  like  unto  man's.  All  these 
arguments  and  repudiations  I  know;  but,  withal, 
I  read  Plato,  and  then  read  in  my  own  soul,  and 
the  book  and  the  voice  of  consciousness  are  one  in 
replying  that  the  truth  of  our  being  can  be  found 
only  in  the  hard  fact  of  dualism,  and  that  the 
spirit,  if  we  would  define  it,  can  be  expressed  only 
in  terms  of  negation.  Nor  has  this  truth  ever 
been  forgotten  by  the  world.  If  you  turn  to  those 
Christian  theologians  who  have  most  wrestled 
with  language  to  give  a  name  to  their  God,  you 
will  find  that  the  attributes  allowed  to  him  are 
all  merely  negatives  of  things  we  know  by  our 
senses.'^  And  so  it  is  in  the  higher  schools  of  phi- 
losophy. The  Oxford  idealism  of  T.  H.  Green 
is  by  no  means  purely  Platonic,  and  its  reduction 
of  dualism  to  a  relation  between  consciousness 
and  nature  tends  to  obscure  the  dualism  within 
consciousness  itself  which  is  the  more  important 
aspect  of  the  problem;  yet  Green's  principle  of 
consciousness  is  at  least  Platonic  in  this,  that  it 
can  be  stated  only  in  terms  of  negation.    "As  to 

^  "In  our  attempts  to  express  what  we  conceive  the  Best 
of  Beings  and  the  Greatest  of  Felicities  to  be,  we  describe 
by  the  exact  Contraries  of  all  that  we  experience  here — the 
one  as  Infinite,  /Ticomprehensible,  /mmutable,  etc.,  the  other 
as  incorruptible,  undefiled,  and  that  passeth  not  away.  At 
all  events,  this  Coincidence,  say  rather  Identity,  of  Attri- 
butes is  sufficient  to  apprize  us  that  to  be  inheritors  of  bliss 
we  must  become  the  children  of  God." — Bishop  Leighton, 
quoted  by  Coleridge  in  his  Aida  to  Reflection. 


148  PLATONISM 

what  that  consciousness  in  itself  or  in  its  com- 
pleteness is,"  he  says,  "we  can  only  make  nega- 
tive statements.  That  there  is  such  a  conscious- 
ness is  implied  in  the  existence  of  the  world;  but 
what  it  is  we  only  know  through  its  so  far  acting 
in  us  as  to  enable  us,  etc."*  It  is  still  our  fate 
that  the  command  of  morahty  is  "Thou  shalt 
not,"  and  they  who  would  worship  God  "in  spirit 
and  in  truth"  must  worship  Him  as  the  spirit 
that  denies,  and  they  who  would  be  philosophers, 
lovers  of  truth,  must  look  to  a  wisdom  that  warns 
us  only  to  abstain.  He  is  the  wise  and  good  man 
who  need  not  say,  as  Bolingbroke  was  obliged  to 
say  in  an  hour  of  remorse:  "My  genius,  imlike 
the  demon  of  Socrates,  whispered  so  softly  that 
very  often  I  heard  him  not,  in  the  hurry  of  those 
passions  by  which  I  was  transported." 

Yet  it  is  equally  true  that  the  effects  of  the 
admonition  are  of  the  most  positive  sort,  as  can 
be  seen  in  the  power  and  influence  of  the  whole 
life  of  Socrates.  No  doubt  the  inhibition  kept 
him  from  political  activity — ^Jesus,  too,  it  will  be 
remembered,  refrained  from  politics — but  it 
guided  him  also  to  the  noblest  form  of  patriotism, 
withholding  him  from  illegal  acts  at  the  bidding 
of  tyrants  who  held  life  and  death  in  their  hands, 
and  restraining  him  voluntarily  in  gaol  when 
bribery  would  have  opened  the  gates  in  a  mo- 
ment.   It  bade  him  subordinate  his  own  wel- 

^  Prolegomena  §  51. 


PSYCHOLOGY  149 

fare  to  those  laws  of  the  State  to  which  he  felt 
himself  bound  by  a  kind  of  tacit  contract,  and 
thus  enabled  him,  as  he  thought,  to  bring  himself 
into  harmony  with  the  unwritten  laws  of  the  uni- 
verse of  which  the  enacted  laws  of  society  are,  as 
it  were,  the  sisters.  Being  subject  to  law,  he 
should  be  in  unison  also  with  the  gods  whose 
word  the  law  is.  Hence  his  fearlessness  of  death 
and  his  terrifying  calmness  on  the  field  of  bat- 
tle. Hence  the  vigour  of  his  morality,  and  the 
preservation  of  his  chastity  against  such  attacks 
of  lust  as  are  described  with  appalling  freedom 
in  the  last  scenes  of  the  Symposium.  Hence  his 
resolute  disregard  of  the  conflicting  opinions  of 
men,  and  his  loyalty  to  the  testimony  of  his  own 
soul  when  it  prohibited  the  retaliation  of  evil  for 
evil,  though  at  any  price  of  suffering  and  oblo- 
quy. The  same  warning  voice  guided  him  in  the  ^29^*" 
rejection  of  undesirable  disciples,  and  it  was 
noted  that  those  who  came  to  him  most  clearly 
under  the  divine  permission  were  speediest  and 
surest  in  their  spiritual  growth.  Through  one  of 
these  disciples  it  made  him  the  teacher  of  Greece, 
and  the  apostle  to  the  world.  The  philosophy  of 
Plato  is  that  same  voice  speaking  with  all  the 
splendid  powers  of  persuasion. 

The  question  of  the  freedom  of  the  will  was 
forced  into  the  domain  of  theology  by  the  desire 
to  vindicate  God  from  the  imputation  of  evil  and 
to  hold  man  accountable  for  his  actions.     And 


160  PLATONISM 

the  problem  of  philosophic  dualism  goes  back  to 
the  same  instinctive  belief  in  himian  responsibil- 
ity. If  a  man  is  responsible  for  his  acts,  then  he 
must  have  been  free  to  choose  between  conflict- 
ing impulses ;  and,  as  we  have  seen,  this  freedom 
can  exist  only  by  virtue  of  an  inhibitive  power  of 
the  soul,  the  so-called  will  to  refrain,  entirely 
distinct  from  the  positive  will  which  is  determined 
by  the  final  predominance  of  one  impulse  over 
another.  The  admission  of  responsibility  thus 
throws  us  back  upon  a  radical  psychological  dual- 
ism and  upon  a  cosmic  dualism  of  good  and  evil 
as  its  counterpart.  But  the  sense  of  responsibil- 
ity itself  springs  from  our  immediate  feelings  of 
happiness  and  misery.  It  is  of  the  essence  of 
those  feelings,  as  distinguished  from  pleasure 
and  pain,  that  we  are  conscious  of  them  as  de- 
pendent upon  ourselves  and  not  upon  circum- 
stances; we  are  happy  with  the  knowledge  that 
we  have  chosen  to  act  after  due  exercise  of  the 
inhibiting  power,  we  are  miserable  with  the  know- 
ledge that  we  have  not  so  chosen.  Thus,  the 
consciousness  of  happiness  and  misery  brings 
with  it  a  sense  of  responsibility;  the  sense  of  re- 
sponsibility leads  us  to  a  belief  in  the  freedom  of 
the  will;  the  freedom  of  the  will  forces  us  to  ac- 
cept a  radical  dualism,  psychological  and  cosmic. 
The  whole  argument  is  merely  a  logical  evolu- 
tion, so  to  speak,  of  what  is  implicit  in  the  primi- 
tive fact  of  consciousness,  since  by  the  very  con- 


PSYCHOLOGY  161 

sciousness  of  happiness  and  misery  we  are  equally 
and  immediately  conscious  of  a  radical  dualism. 

Now  the  consciousness  of  happiness  and  mis- 
ery is  certainly  the  fountain-head  of  Plato's 
ethical  philosophy,  and  the  consequent  dualism 
of  the  soul  is  constantly  present,  sometimes  im- 
phcit,  sometimes  clearly  explicit,  in  his  psycho- 
logy. But  it  cannot  be  said  that  he  followed  a 
perfectly  consistent  course  in  regard  to  the  other 
two  links  in  the  chain,  the  dualism  of  good  and 
evil,  and  the  sense  of  responsibility.  It  remains, 
therefore,  to  examine  his  attitude  on  these  two 
points,  since  the  argument  is  so  intimately  con- 
catenated that  no  one  link  can  be  dropped  with- 
out imperilling  the  whole. 

Plato's  difficulties  over  the  cosmic  dualism  of 
good  and  evil  were  precisely  those  that  were  later 
to  trouble  the  theologians  of  Christianity:  how 
shall  we  reconcile  the  presence  of  intrinsic  evil  in 
the  world  with  faith  in  an  omnipotent  deity? 
And  to  escape  this  unanswerable  contradiction  it 
must  be  admitted  that  Plato  more  than  once  fell  '^j^j, 
into  the  fallacy  so  dear  to  Stoics  and  deists :  God 
must  be  the  cause  of  all  things,  yet  God  cannot  be 
the  cause  of  evil;  hence  the  maladjustment  and 
wrong  we  see  in  individual  things  and  persons  are 
not  essentially  evil,  but  are  the  mere  necessity  of 
imperfection  in  a  world  of  infinite  parts  and 
pieces.    The  evil  of  the  part  is  the  good  of  the 


I^ws 


162  PLATONISM 

whole.®  Elsewhere  Plato  takes  refuge  in  that  in- 
secure form  of  optimism  which  might  be  called  a 
half-way   house   between   radical    dualism    and 

Timaeus  gtoico-dcistic  mouism.  God  is  good  and  must  be 
the  author  of  good,  and  the  world  is  the  best  of 
possible  worlds.    If  there  is  evil  in  it,  this  will  be 

Ibid.  56c  due  to  the  refractoriness  of  the  material  in  which 
God  had  to  work — rather,  not  he  himself,  for 
he  would  not  be  held  responsible  for  things  as 

jbid.  4iA  they  are,  but  the  lesser  gods,  his  offspring,  to 
whom  he  entrusts  the  actual  work  of  creation. 

And  as  Plato  was  led  at  times  by  the  paradox 
that  confronts  all  theologians  to  remove  evil 
somehow  from  the  first  cause,  or  causes,  of  things, 
and  to  speak  of  it  as  if  it  were  a  mere  shadow  or 
negation  of  reality,  so  he  was  tempted  by  the 
Socratic  identification  of  virtue  and  knowledge 

*  I  have  called  this  theodicy,  which  virtually  denies  the 
reality  of  evil,  Stoic  (cf.  Marcus  Aurelius  ii,  3,  et  passim) 
and  deistic  (cf.  Shaftesbury,  The  Moralists  i,  3,  et  passim), 
but  it  is  a  fallacy  that  lies  in  ambush  for  all  theology. 
Thomas  Aquinas  even  introduced  it  into  the  orthodox  canon 
of  Catholicism;  thus,  Summa  I,  xlvii,  2;  "Sicut  ergo  divina 
sapientia  causa  est  distinctionis  rerum  propter  perfectionem 
universi,  ita  et  inaequalitatis ;  non  enim  esset  perfectum  uni- 
versum,  si  tantum  unus  gradus  bonitatis  inveniretur  in  re- 
bus" ;  and  I,  xlix,  3 :  "Puta,  si  quis  dicat  naturam  ignis  esse 
malam,  quia  combussit  domum  alicujus  pauperis.  Judicium 
autem  de  bonitate  alicujus  rei  non  est  accipiendum  secundum 
ordinem  ad  aliquid  particulare,  sed  secundum  seipsum,  et 
secundum  ordinem  ad  totum  universum." — The  same  denial 
of  the  reality  of  evil  in  human  sinfulness  is  involved  in  the 
Thomist  argument  in  regard  to  primary  and  secondary 
causes. 


PSYCHOLOGY  168 

to  explain  away  the  fact  of  human  responsibil- 
ity.    There  is  no  avoiding  this  twist  in  Plato's  ^    ^^ 
teaching;  he  raises  the  point  of  irresponsibiUty     public 
again  and  again,  and  in  one  of  the  later  books     "^^^^ 
of  the  Laws,  where,  apparently  he  is  replying  860d  ff. 
to  certain  criticisms  of  Aristotle,"  he  develops 
the  thesis  at  great  length  and  in  such  a  way 
as    to    leave    no    room    for    misunderstandiiig. 
And,  indeed,  if  we  believe  that  all  men  do  right 
so  far  as  they  know  what  the  right  is,  and  if  we 
limit  knowledge  to  what  is  learned  by  perception 
and  experience,  how  shall  we  escape  a  kind  of  in- 
tellectual determinism?    Instead  of  holding  men 
responsible  for  their  wilfulness,  the  Platonist  in 
this  sense  should  be  one  to  say  with  Christ  on  the 
Cross,  "Father,  forgive  them,  for  they  know  not 
what  they  do."     As  a  matter  of  fact,  Plato's  p^^jtagoras 
common  theory  of  punishment  as  purely  reme-    323c  ff. 
dial  in  function,  rather  than  retributive,  is  quite  ^**  '^** 
in  accordance  with  this  view  of  human  errancy; 
though  it  is  to  be  noted  that  when  he  comes  to 
deal  with  the  practical  details  of  criminal  pro- 
cedure, he  virtually  allows  a  difference  between  Law.  865a 
voluntary  and  involuntary  deeds  of  violence. 
These  inconsistencies  of  Plato  with  his  own 

"  Teichmiiller's  Literarische  Fehden  is  replete  with  wild 
conjectures,  but  he  has,  I  am  inclined  to  believe,  made  good 
his  contention  that  this  excursus  of  the  Laws  is  an  answer 
to  the  strictures  in  the  third  book  of  the  Nicomachean 
Ethic t  on  the  Socratico-Platonic  thesis  that  no  man  errs,  or 
sins,  willingly. 


154  PLATONISM 

philosophy  of  free  will  and  dualism  cannot  be 
shirked ;  nor  should  we  forget  that  they  have  been 
the  source,  or  encouragement,  of  a  vast  amount 
of  twisted  thinking  on  the  capital  question  of  evil 
and  responsibiHty  in  Pagan  and  Christian  writ- 
ers. But,  withal,  it  is  still  more  important  to 
remember  that  the  burden  of  Plato's  ethical  feel- 
ing is  prevailingly  in  harmony  with  his  philo- 
sophy. No  one  was  more  conscious  than  he  of 
the  reality  of  evil,  when  his  writing  is  free  of  en- 
tanglement in  a  rationalizing  theodicy.  The  evil 
3790**"  of  life,  he  declares  categorically,  outweighs  the 
good ;  and  in  general  his  tendency  to  err  is  rather 
on  the  side  of  an  asceticism  that  exaggerates  the 
conflict  of  principles  in  the  soul.  Even  in  the 
Timaeus,  where  his  deistic  optimism  is  most 
clearly  expressed,  the  outcome  of  his  cosmogony, 
as  we  shall  see  in  a  later  chapter,  is  an  absolute 
dualism  of  good  and  evil. 

And  as  with  the  reality  of  evil,  so  it  is  with  the 
question  of  responsibility.  No  one  can  have  fol- 
lowed the  argimient  of  The  Republic  without 
perceiving  that  the  whole  discussion  of  justice 
and  injustice,  happiness  and  misery,  is  based  on 
a  deep  and  unshakable  consciousness  of  human 
responsibiHty.  Nor  are  passages  lacking  that 
offer  another  explanation  than  intellectual  de- 
terminism for  the  Socratic  identification  of  vir- 
tue and  knowledge.  The  principle  of  dualism  is 
too  firmly  rooted  in  Plato's  mind  to  permit  him 


PSYCHOLOGY  166 

to  dwell  long  in  any  rational  evasion  of  reality. 
If  you  wish  to  look  into  his  true  heart,  turn,  for 
instance,  to  the  opening  of  the  fifth  book  of  the 
Laws,  where  he  proclaims  roundly  that  to  every 
man  his  whole  being  is  double,  and  that  all  the 
honour  and  dishonour  of  the  soul  hang  on  the 
right  recognition  of  this  fact  of  consciousness: 
"For  when  a  man  holds  not  himself  but  others  727b 
responsible  for  his  various  faults  and  for  the 
many  and  great  evils  that  befall  him,  and  is  al- 
ways exempting  himself  as  innocent,  he  is  not 
really  honouring  his  soul,  as  he  thinks,  but  the 
very  contrary."  Ignorance  and  weakness  may 
be  regarded  as  the  cause  of  evil,  and  are  indeed 
the  cause,  if  rightly  considered,  but  behind  them 
lies  the  original  and  mysterious  power  of  self- 
love  (philautia) : 

"The  greatest  evil  to  men,  generally,  is  one  Laws  731D 
which  is  innate  in  their  souls,  and  which  a  man  is 
always  excusing  in  himself  and  so  has  no  way  of 
escaping.  I  mean  what  is  expressed  in  the  say- 
ing that  every  man  is  and  ought  to  be  dear  to 
himself.  Whereas  the  truth  is  that  this  absorb- 
ing self-love  is  continually  and  in  all  men  the 
cause  of  all  their  faults;  for  the  lover  is  blinded 
in  regard  to  the  object  of  his  passion,  so  that  he 
is  a  bad  judge  of  the  just  and  the  good  and  the 
beautiful,  always  fancying  that  he  ought  to  hon- 
our what  belongs  to  him  above  the  truth.  Yet, 
really,  he  who  would  be  a  great  man  ought  not 


166  PLATONISM 

to  cherish  himself  or  his  possessions,  but  the 
things  that  are  just,  whether  they  pertain  to 
himself  or  to  the  conduct  of  another.  From  this 
same  fault  arises  the  common  habit  of  regarding 
our  own  ignorance  as  wisdom,  and  of  thinking 
we  know  all  things  when,  so  to  speak,  we  really 
know  nothing." 

These  are  words  that  should  never  be  forgot- 
ten by  the  Platonist  when  Plato,  for  the  mo- 
ment, seems  to  sway  from  his  own  deepest  con- 
victions. They  were,  in  fact,  remembered  and 
much  quoted  by  the  Platonizers  of  ancient 
Greece,  especially  by  Plutarch.  They  may  not, 
perhaps  no  words  can,  clear  away  the  metaphysi- 
cal difficulties  that  beset  any  one  who,  rashly  or 
sullenly,  undertakes  to  reason  out  the  problem 
of  evil,  but  they  contain,  I  suspect,  the  only  prac- 
tical answer  philosophy  can  give  to  that  vexed 
question.  It  makes  little  difference  whether  we 
say  that  self-love  is  the  source  of  ignorance  and 
the  evils  that  flow  therefrom,  or  that  ignorance 
is  the  source  of  self-love.  Rather,  the  right  way 
of  proceeding  is  to  grasp  the  distinction  between 
the  higher  knowledge  of  intuition  and  the  lower 
knowledge  of  things,  which  Plato  so  often  makes, 
and,  having  firmly  assured  ourselves  of  this  dis- 
tinction, to  see  that  self-love,  as  the  spring  of 
evil,  is  merely  another  name  for  the  absence  of 
the  higher  knowledge.  Whether  we  call  such  a 
condition  self-love  or  self -ignorance  depends  on 


PSYCHOLOGY  167 

whether  we  regard  it  from  one  or  the  other  of  the 
two  contrary  poles  of  the  "self" ;  it  is  self-love  if 
regarded  from  the  lower  element  of  our  being, 
self-ignorance  if  regarded  from  the  higher  ele- 
ment. It  is  essentially,  in  the  one  case  or  the 
other,  a  failure  to  submit  to  the  law  of  our  double 
being,  a  kind  of  indolence,  or  want  of  attention, 
at  the  very  centre  of  consciousness;  for  self- 
knowledge  is  the  supreme  activity  of  a  soul  at- 
tending to  its  own  business. 

ResponsibiUty,  then,  is  the  word  we  use  for 
that  self-knowledge  which  tells  us  that  the  exer- 
cise or  inertia  of  the  inner  check  and  the  happi- 
ness or  misery  attendant  thereupon  are  matters 
entirely  within  our  own  jurisdiction.  But  we 
also  know  that  our  pleasures  and  pains  are  con- 
tingent upon  forces  outside  of  our  complete  con- 
trol; and  here  we  are  bound  to  hold  ourselves 
creatures  of  fate  and  chance,  and  not  responsi- 
ble. In  so  far  as  the  Socratic  thesis  may  be  taken 
to  identify  the  higher  knowledge  and  morality, 
it  implies  freedom  and  responsibility;  in  so  far 
as  it  identifies  practical  knowledge  and  virtue  it 
implies  determinism  and  irresponsibility.  To 
revert  to  the  illustration  employed  by  Plato  and 
by  Locke  and  Edwards,  let  us  suppose  the  case 
of  a  man  before  whom  liquor  is  set.  On  the  one 
side  he  is  drawn  by  a  natural  physical  craving  to 
drink ;  on  the  other  side  are  the  considerations  of 
expediency  and  inexpediency  which  come  to  him 


158  PLATONISM 

in  a  more  or  less  laggard  manner  from  the  mem- 
ory of  experience  and  from  the  precepts  of  tra- 
dition. If  he  exercises  duly  the  will  to  refrain,  so 
as  to  place  himself  in  a  position  to  form  a  clear 
image  and  judgment  of  the  desirability  or  un- 
desirability  of  drinking,  he  will  be  acting  morally 
and  will  be  happy;  his  judgment  may  be,  prob- 
ably will  be,  wise  as  well  as  clear,  and  the  act  of 
drinking  or  not  drinking  will  probably  result  in 
pleasure ;  though  there  is  also  the  possibility  that 
his  judgment  may  be  based  on  insufficient  know- 
ledge, with  the  result  of  painful  consequences. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  he  acts  without  due  sus- 
pense of  judgment,  allowing  himself  to  be  hur- 
ried on  by  the  physical  craving  or  the  contrary 
considerations  without  a  proper  balance  of  mo- 
tives, and  if  his  judgment  is  then  erroneous,  as  it 
probably  will  be,  he  will  not  only  suffer  pain  as 
a  consequence  of  his  action,  but  will  feel  that  he 
has  acted  from  self-love,  or  self -ignorance,  and 
will  be  miserable  accordingly.  Whatever  his 
course,  he  will  be  conscious  that  he  was  entirely 
free  to  exercise  the  will  to  refrain,  or  the  inner 
check,  and  will  hold  himself  responsible  for  his 
happiness  or  misery.  But  he  will  know  also  that, 
at  the  moment  of  action,  his  positive  will  was 
bound  to  follow  the  predominant  inclination,  and 
that,  as  the  physical  craving  and  the  weight  of 
experience  were  determined  by  causes  not  en- 
tirely within  his  jurisdiction,  he  is  not  fully  re- 


PSYCHOLOGY  169 

sponsible  for  the  contingencies  of  pleasure  and 
pain. 

There  is  thus  an  element  of  responsibility  in 
our  conduct,  and  there  is  also  an  element  of  ir- 
responsibihty,  and  it  was  probably  this  complex- 
ity of  our  ethical  nature  that  led  Plato  to  waver 
in  his  attitude  towards  the  question.  And  for 
the  very  reason  that  any  philosophical  statement 
of  the  problem  must  close  with  this  admission  of 
an  irreconcilable  paradox,  Plato  has,  after  his 
manner,  given  his  final  answer  in  the  form  of  a 
myth,  enjoying  in  this  realm  of  symbols  a  release 
from  the  restricting  law  of  scepticism.  In  the 
great  epilogue  to  The  Republic  which  describes 
the  experience  of  men  in  the  other  world,  it  is 
said  that  the  souls  of  the  dead,  after  undergoing 
for  a  time  the  penalties  and  rewards  of  their  for- 
mer deeds,  are  brought  together  into  the  pres- 
ence of  the  three  Fates.  Thereupon  a  prophet 
takes  from  the  knees  of  Lachesis  the  various 
samples  of  lives  and  the  lots,  and  from  a  lofty 
pulpit  makes  this  proclamation:  "The  words  of 
Lachesis,  daughter  of  Necessity.  Ye  souls  of  a 
day,  now  is  the  beginning  of  another  cycle  of 
mortal  life  and  death.  Your  daemon  will  not  be 
allotted  to  you,  but  you  shall  choose  your  dae- 
mon. Let  him  who  draws  the  first  lot  have  the 
first  choice,  and  the  life  he  chooses  shall  be  his 
destiny.  But  virtue  is  free,  and  as  a  man  hon- 
ours or  dishonours  her  he  will  have  more  or  less 


160  PLATONISM 

of  her.  The  responsibility  lies  with  the  chooser; 
God  is  justified.  Even  for  the  last  comer,  if  he 
selects  wisely  and  will  live  diligently,  there  is 
ready  a  life,  not  evil,  with  which  he  may  be  con- 
tent. Let  not  the  first  to  choose  be  heedless,  nor 
the  last  be  dejected."  So  the  lives  are  thrown 
down  before  the  waiting  souls,  and  the  comedy 
of  choosing  proceeds.  The  moral  of  the  allegory 
for  us  lies  in  the  mixture  of  freedom  and  com- 
pulsion in  the  law.  There  is  an  element  of  haz- 
ard in  the  order  and  range  of  choice,  yet  Odys- 
seus, the  wise,  to  whom  falls  the  last  lot,  seeks 
and  finds  the  one  life  he  desires,  finds  it  lying  ne- 
glected by  all  his  predecessors.^^  The  selection 
when  it  comes  is  the  man's  own,  yet  there  is  a 
bias  in  the  soul  which  leads  it  to  make  a  choice  in 
accordance  with  its  previous  career.  Only  the 
few  learn  from  past  experience,  and  they  so  very 
little.  The  myth  of  transmigration  was  to  Plato 
a  half-serious  parable  of  the  same  truth  that  was 
conveyed  to  the  Hindu  mind  by  the  word  karma, 
which  meant  at  once  a  man's  voluntary  deeds 
and  their  inevitable  consequences,  his  freedom 
amid  the  coils  of  fate  which  he  himself  was  weav- 
ing and  could  alone  unravel; 

^^  The  combination  of  freedom  and  determinism,  respon- 
sibility and  irresponsibility,  in  Plato's  myth  became  a  sub- 
ject of  debate  among  the  commentators.  See  Stobaeus, 
Ethica  vii,  89. 


I 

PSYCHOLOGY  161 

We  harvest  as  the  seed  was  sown, 
And  he  that  scattered  reaps  alone; — 
So  from  each  deed  there  falls  a  germ 
That  shall  in  coming  lives  its  source  affirm. 

Unseen  they  call  it,  for  it  lurks 
The  hidden  spring  of  present  works ; 
Unknown-befgre,  even  as  the  fruit 
Was  undiscovered  in  the  vital  root. 

And  he  that  now  impure  hath  been 
Impure  shall  be,  the  clean  be  clean; 
We  wrestle  in  our  present  state 
With  bonds  ourselves  we  forged — and  call  it 
Fate. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS 

The  setting  of  the  problem  we  have  now  to 
consider  is  admirably  given  in  the  introduction 
to  the  so-called  Moralia  Magna  of  the  Aristotel- 
ian school.  The  first  to  approach  the  question  of 
ethics,  says  the  author  of  this  treatise,  was  Py- 
thagoras, who,  however,  erred  in  looking  for  vir- 
tues in  numbers.  After  him  came  Socrates,  who 
discoursed  better  and  more  copiously  on  these 
matters,  but  still  faultily.  For  he  placed  the 
virtues  entirely  in  the  rational  part  of  the  soul, 
quite  overlooking  the  irrational  part  and  taking 
no  account  of  the  passions  and  the  natural  dis- 
positions of  men.  The  error  is  patent.  In  the 
sciences,  when  we  know  what  a  thing  is  we  have 
the  science.  Thus,  if  a  man  knows  what  physic 
is,  he  is  thereby  a  physician.  But  with  the  vir- 
tues it  is  not  so;  for  it  does  not  follow  that,  if  a 
man  knows  what  justice  is,  he  is  himself  forthwith 
just.  Afterwards  Plato  rightly  divided  the  soul 
into  two  parts,  the  rational  and  the  irrational, 
and  distributed  the  virtues  accordingly.  So  far 
well.  But  Plato  also  erred  when  he  mixed  up  his 
discussion  of  virtue  with  his  discussion  of  the 
Good  as  absolute  truth  and  being;  for  there  is 

189 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  168 

nothing  in  common  between  these  two  questions. 
No  doubt  the  good  is  the  end  and  purpose  of 
virtue,  but  this  is  the  good  as  it  is  to  us  in  our 
civil  life,  and  not  the  Good  conceived  abstractly 
as  an  Idea  separated  from  the  actual  things 
which  we  call  good. 

That  is  a  fair  summary  of  the  ground  on  which 
Aristotle  and  later  Peripatetics  rested  their  op- 
position to  the  Platonic  philosophy.  It  will  be 
clear,  I  think,  that  their  analysis  of  Plato's  psy- 
chology was  correct  so  far  as  it  went,  but  was 
seriously  inadequate.  The  more  difficult  pro- 
blem remains,  whether  they  weie  right  in  reject- 
ing the  doctrine  of  Ideas  as  an  illogical  sequence 
of  psychological  duahsm.  What  were  these 
Ideas,  which  have  made  such  a  stir  in  the  world, 
and  what  is  their  exact  place  in  the  Platonic 
philosophy? 

Now,  it  may  be  true  that,  looking  into  our 
souls,  we  are  obliged  to  state  the  facts  of  con- 
sciousness in  the  terms  of  a  paradoxical  dualism, 
and  such  a  statement  may  have  great  practical 
value,  but  it  still  leaves  the  facts,  in  one  sense, 
quite  unexplained.  What  is  the  bond  between 
the  inner  check,  or  spirit,  and  the  concupiscent 
element  of  the  soul?  How  and  why  does  the  one 
act  upon  the  other?  How  even  can  two  essenti- 
ally contrary  powers  exist  together  in  one  con- 
sciousness? These  are  the  questions  that  reason 
thrusts  upon  a  dualistic  philosopher,  and  that 


164  PLATONISM 

have  no  rational  answer.  The  recourse  to  either 
form  of  monism  he  merely  refuses  as  contradic- 
tory to  the  facts  of  consciousness,  denouncing  the 
acceptance  of  spiritual  reality  alone  as  a  false 
ideahsm,  and  the  acceptance  of  the  concupiscent 
or  sensational  reality  alone  as  a  false  scepticism. 
The  attempt  to  bring  the  two  terms  closer  to- 
gether by  lowering  the  spirit  to  a  process  of  rea- 
soning he  repudiates  as  rationahsm,  and  the  ef- 
fort to  find  some  intellectual  reconciliation  of  the 
irreconcilable  he  deals  with  as  a  futile  presump- 
tion of  metaphysics.  Nevertheless,  some  sort  of 
reconciliation  the  heart  of  man  craves  and  will 
not,  perhaps  cannot,  forgo;  and  the  Platonic 
Ideas,  as  the  dualist  understands  them,  are  pri- 
marily just  the  labour  of  the  imagination  to  effect 
practically  what  could  not  be  ejfipected  intellect- 
ually. We  shall  be  in  a  better  position  to  com- 
prehend this  act  of  the  imagination  when  we 
have  analysed  Plato's  treatment  of  a  very  com- 
plex subject. 

The  first  and  chief  difficulty  in  the  way  of  the 
interpreter  is  the  obvious  fact  that  Plato  ap- 
proaches the  doctrine  of  Ideas  from  many  dif- 
ferent angles,  and  nowhere  gives  a  final  exposi- 
tion of  his  meaning.  fThat  was  his  lordly  privi- 
lege; so  much  so  that  one  is  sometimes  tempted 
to  believe,  with  Schleiermacher,  that  he  deliber- 
ately left  these  obstacles  in  the  path  of  his  dis- 
ciples in  order  that  they  might  not  be  satisfied 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  166 

with  the  empty  husks  of  word-knowledge,  but 
should  be  kept  aware  of  their  ignorance  until 
what  they  learned  was  illuminated  by  the  light 
of  their  own  inner  experience.^  At  any  rate  we 
should  not  fall  into  the  error  of  smoothing  away 
these  obstacles  by  assuming  a  radical  break  in 
Plato's  doctrine.  That  his  attitude  towards 
Ideas  altered  somewhat  in  the  course  of  a  long 
life  may  be  granted;  he  would  scarcely  have 
been  human  if  he  had  not  suffered  the  changes  of 
time.  But  to  hold,  as  it  has  become  rather  the 
fashion  nowadays,  that  at  a  certain  moment  in 
his  career  he  repudiated  one  theory  of  Ideas  and 
adopted  a  contrary  theory,  or  even  that  the 
change  in  his  views  was  anything  more  than  the 
natural  shifting  of  interest  from  one  aspect  of 
the  question  to  another,  is,  I  say  flatly,  to  mis- 
conceive totally  his  philosophic  history.  The 
evidence  for  such  a  break  is  of  the  flimsiest  sort 
and  is  contradicted  by  passages  which  can  be  ex- 
plained away  only  by  doing  violence  to  the  text. 
If  Plato  appears  inconsistent  in  his  attitude 
towards  Ideas  it  is  because  here,  as  in  other 
cardinal  points  of  his  philosophy,  he  allows  him- 
self a  puzzling  license  in  the  matter  of  termino- 
logy.* Sometimes  the  word  "idea,"  or  eidos,  is 
used  quite  as  it  might  be  heard  in  the  market- 
place, meaning  simply  the  "form"  of  an  object,  or 

^  It  was  a  saying  of  the  philosopher  Didymus,  as  quoted 
by  Stobaeus^  that  to  iroX.v4>wov  rov  lIXarmv<K  oi  troAvSo^oy. 


166  PLATONISM 

the  "class"  of  objects  grouped  together  more  or 
less  loosely  by  similarity  of  form;  at  other  times 
it  has  a  highly  technical  meaning  as  used  in  the 
schools;  and  it  passes  from  one  use  to  the  other 
in  such  a  way  that  on  occasion  we  may  have  diffi- 
culty in  determining  its  particular  degree  of 
technicality.  But  the  most  troublesome  ambi- 
guity— an  ambiguity  which  has  caused  the  spill- 
ing of  oceans  of  ink  and  of  some  blood — meets 
us  when  we  are  most  sure  that  the  usage  is 
strictly  technical.  It  is  hard  for  the  classifying 
philologue  or  the  systematizing  metaphysician  to 
acquiesce  in  the  fact  that  the  Platonic  Ideas  fall 
under  two  quite  different  categories,  correspond- 
ing to  two  different  processes  of  the  mind;  and 
the  maddening  part  of  the  truth  is  that  Plato, 
though  his  whole  philosophy  hinges  in  a  way  on 
this  distinction,  will,  when  he  pleases,  write  as  if 
he  were  unaware  of  any  such  distinction.  This 
sovereign  indifference  to  our  ease,  I  say,  mad- 
dens the  systematizer  and  may  blind  the  modest 
inquirer;  yet  the  faithful  Platonist  would  scarce- 
ly wish  it  otherwise,  since  he  is  thus  forced  al- 
ways to  remember  the  winged  freedom  of  the 
spirit  and  the  peril  of  scholastic  pigeon-holes. 
What  he  might  censure  as  ignorance  or  confusion 
in  a  lesser  mind,  he  may  tolerate  as  a  not  ignoble 
^""iMc'*"'  liberty  in  the  proved  seer.  "A  certain  freedom 
in  the  use  of  words  and  phrases,  with  the  avoid- 
ance of  minute  precision,"  Plato  himself  says,  "is 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  167 

commonly  allowed  in  a  man  who  would  not  be 
pedantic;  one  even  might  call  the  contrary  pro- 
cedure illiberal." 

The  Ideas  of  Plato,  then,  fall  under  two  main 
categories,  which  may  be  designated  as  the  ra- 
tional and  the  ethical.  The  former  category  is 
itself  not  simple,  but  must  be  taken  to  embrace 
both  mathematical  forms  (the  discussion  of  which 
we  shall  leave  to  the  following  chapter  on 
Science)  and  those  intellectual  generalizations 
from  particular  objects  to  the  group  which  are 
commonly,  but  erroneously,  thought  of  first  in 
connection  with  the  Platonic  doctrine.  This  sec- 
ond division,  embracing  intellectual  generaliza- 
tions, again  falls  into  two  subdivisions  exempli- 
fied, respectively,  by  the  Idea  man  which  em- 
braces within  itself  the  many  individual  men  we 
see,  and  the  Idea  table  which  we  have  in  our 
minds  in  connection  with  seeing  and  using  many 
individual  tables.  In  the  one  case  the  Idea  is  of 
a  class  of  things  in  nature,  and  corresponds  to 
the  gentis  or  species  of  modem  science;  in  the 
other  case  it  is  of  a  class  of  manufactured  ob- 
jects. In  either  case  the  term,  without  question, 
has  a  certain  practical  utility  and  answers  to  a 
certain  process  of  experience:  that  is  to  say,  in 
common  parlance  we  have  no  difficulty  in  distin- 
guishing men  as  a  group  from  any  other  group 
of  animals,  and  tables  from  any  other  kind  of 
furniture.     The  distinction  is  at  least  a  prag- 


168  PLATONISM 

matical  reality.  Our  minds  are  not  harassed  by 
the  fact  that  creatures  may  be  fomid  or  imagined 
which  shade  by  imperceptible  degrees  upwards 
into  men  and  downwards  into  apes,  or  by  the 
fact  that  articles  may  be  made  which  could  with 
equal  propriety  be  called  tables  or  desks  or 
shelves ;  for  the  ordinary  concerns  of  life  the  dis- 
tinctions are  plain  and  the  terms  sufficiently 
precise. 

But  difficulties  grow  thick  as  soon  as  we  begin 
to  speculate.  What  is  the  nature  of  this  Idea 
man  or  this  Idea  table  which  we  have  in  our 
minds?  Is  it  an  entity  apart  from  the  individual 
objects,  of  which  it  is  the  pre-existent  cause? 
And  if  so,  how  and  where  does  it  exist?  Was  it 
as  an  image  in  the  mind  of  the  Creator,  or  as  a 
latent  potentiality  of  impersonal  energy,  or  as  a 
pattern  to  which  the  Creator  looked  or  which 
somehow  controlled  the  impersonal  energy  ?  And 
how  could  there  be  a  single  stable  image  or  po- 
tentiality or  pattern  of  a  group  of  individuals 
varying  indefinitely  in  traits  and  merging  in- 
sensibly into  other  groups?  If  there  was  a  pre- 
existent  Idea  of  men  or  tables,  then  why,  by  the 
same  right,  was  there  not  an  Idea  of  a  certain 
class  of  men  or  tables,  and  then  an  Idea  of  a 
smaller  group,  and  so  on?  Aristotle  and  other 
critics  of  Plato  were  not  slow  to  bring  out  these 
difficulties.  Of  course  we  might  say  that  it  is 
just  as  easy  to  conceive  the  existence  of  an  infi- 


DOCTRINE  OF  mEAS  169 

nite  number  of  Ideas  as  the  existence  of  an  in- 
finite number  of  material  objects,  but  we  balk  at 
the  infinitude  of  Ideas  as  a  needless  duplicating 
of  our  troubles.  On  the  other  hand,  if  we  reject 
Ideas  as  previously  existent  entities,  and  hold 
them  to  be  no  more  than  words  corresponding  to 
generalizations  of  the  human  mind,  are  we  not 
boimd  by  such  a  theory  to  reject  also  any  prin- 
ciple of  purpose  or  teleology  in  the  world?  The 
notion  of  purpose  or  design,  whether  we  regard 
the  world  as  created  or  self -evolved,  can  scarcely 
be  maintained  unless  an  Idea  of  what  is  to  be 
unfolded  already  in  some  manner  exists.  Either 
course  leaves  us  with  insoluble  difficulties,  and 
hence  the  long  and  unended  debate  between  the 
metaphysicians  of  the  realistic  and  the  nominal- 
istic  schools,  between  those  who,  in  the  mediaeval 
jargon,  contended  for  universaUa  ante  rem  and 
those  who  contended  for  universaUa  post  rem. 

In  a  general  way  it  may  be  said  that,  with 
natural  classes,  such  as  men  and  animals,  the  dif- 
ficulties of  the  nominalistic  view  are  seemingly 
the  more  insuperable,  and  that,  in  the  slow  re- 
turn of  science  and  philosophy  to  a  dependence 
on  some  sort  of  teleology  in  the  process  of  evo- 
lution, we  are  forcing  ourselves  back  into  a  be- 
lief in  Ideas  in  something  like  the  Platonic  sense. 
But  with  a  manufactured  article,  such  as  tables, 
the  obstacles  in  the  way  of  accepting  the  Idea 
still  seem  mountainous;  they  loom  up  before  the 


170  PLATONISM 

mind  in  the  case  of  such  an  object  because  we 
see  its  conception  and  follow  its  construction  as 
we  do  not  in  the  case  of  natural  groups.  Some 
commentators,  perceiving  this  difference  in  the 
difficulties,  have  urged  that  Plato  held  to  Ideas 
of  natural  classes,  but  never,  or  only  at  an  early 
stage  of  his  mental  development,  believed  in 
Ideas  of  manufactured  articles.  That  is  an  old 
way  with  commentators,  to  strain  at  a  gnat  and 
swallow  the  camel.  In  reality  the  difference  is 
apparent  only  and  superficial,  and  it  is  just  as 
easy  to  hypostatize  one  kind  of  generahzation  as 
the  other.  It  ought  to  be  perfectly  clear  from 
the  tenth  book  of  The  Republic,  if  from  no  other 
passage,  that  Plato  in  his  maturity  held  equally 
to  both  kinds  of  Ideas.  It  ought  to  be  clear  also 
that  he  spoke  of  Ideas  as  of  entities  anterior  to 
individual  objects  and  having  an  existence  out- 
side of  the  generahzing  mind  of  man.  To  doubt 
this  is  to  deny  the  plain  sense  of  innumerable 
passages  in  his  works  and  is  to  flout  the  common 
sense  of  many  generations  of  readers. 

So  far  the  way  of  the  interpreter  is  fairly  clear 
and  straightforward.  He  has  simply  to  admit 
that  Plato  taught  the  reality  of  generahzations 
as  pre-existent  entities  without  attempting  to 
explain  the  nature  of  their  existence.  In  very 
sooth,  there  would  appear  to  be  no  answer  to 
such  a  question,  and  Plato  was  wise  and  honest 
enough  not  to  stultify  himself  by  trying  to  forge 
one. 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  171 

He  was  saved  from  this  intellectual  stultifica- 
tion partly  by  his  loyalty  to  the  Socratic  scepti- 
cism, and  partly  also,  it  may  be,  by  the  fact  that 
his  main  interest  lay  not  in  these  Ideas  that  cor- 
respond to  generalizations  from  the  similarity  of 
objects  of  perception  (nor  even  in  those  other 
rational  Ideas,  corresponding  to  mathematical 
forms,  which  are  yet  to  be  considered),  but  in 
Ideas  (he  employed  the  same  word  for  both 
kinds)  of  a  totally  different  origin.  It  is  hard  to 
see  how  any  one  can  read  the  Dialogues  without 
being  impressed  by  the  fact  that  Plato  was 
brought  to  his  doctrine  of  Ideas  by  ethical  rather 
than  logical  considerations,  and  that  to  the  end, 
despite  what  may  be  called  his  period  of  meta- 
physical stress,  his  chief  interest  lay  in  this  di- 
rection. The  clue  to  his  motives  is  given  in  the 
closing  paragraphs  of  the  fifth  book  of  The  Re- 
public, where  he  is  introducing  his  great  argu- 
ment on  the  place  of  Ideas  in  the  philosophical 
and  pohtical  life.  What  shall  be  our  reply,  he 
says,  to  the  good  fellow  who  is  quite  ready  to  ad- 
mit the  existence  of  beautiful  things,  but  who 
laughs  at  us  when  we  speak  of  the  absolute  un- 
changeable Idea  of  beauty  as  really  and  eternal- 
ly existent  apart  from  these  particular  things? 
Shall  we  not  ask  him  to  name  any  particular 
beautiful  thing  which  on  occasion  may  not  ap- 
pear ugly,  or  any  just  or  holy  act,  so-called, 
which  may  not  under  other  circumstances  appear 


172  PLATONISM 

unjust  and  unholy?  And  so  with  other  things 
we  regard  as  great  or  small,  heavy  or  hght,  and 
the  like.  No,  the  simple  truth  is  that  the  popular 
ascription  of  beauty  and  the  like  is  concerned 
with  things  that  are  tossing  about  in  some  mid- 
region  between  pure  being  and  not-being;  beauty 
and  justice  so  taken  furnish  no  hold  on  know- 
ledge, neither  can  they  be  utterly  ignored,  but 
are  matters  of  opinion  only,  a  state  of  mind  as 
shifting  and  uncertain  as  themselves.  And  as 
men  use  these  words  so  will  their  hearts  be.  If 
a  man  admits  the  reality  of  beauty  and  justice  as 
eternal  Ideas  he  will  love  beauty  and  justice  and 
embrace  them  as  things  he  can  know  and  depend 
upon;  he  will  be  a  lover  of  such  knowledge,  a 
philosopher.  But  if  he  sees  only  a  mutable  world 
of  things  now  fair  and  just,  now  ugly  and  im- 
just,  he  will  perforce  be  content  with  this  sort  of 
uncertainty  and  will  not  endure  to  hear  of  fixed 
laws  of  beauty  and  justice.  There  is  nothing  for 
him  really  to  know,  no  knowledge  for  him  to 
love;  he  will  not  be  a  philosopher,  but  a  lover  of 
opinion,  a  philodoxer. 

Now  pretty  much  all  of  Plato's  theory  is  in 
this  passage,  which  I  have  given  in  somewhat 
condensed  form,  and  it  will  repay  minute  study. 
In  the  first  place  it  will  be  observed  that  the 
Ideas  of  great  and  small,  corresponding  to  gen- 
eralizations derived  from  the  similarity  of  ob- 
jects of  perception,  are  thrown  in  among  the 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  17S 

Ideas  of  beauty  and  justice,  as  if  all  Ideas  were 
of  the  same  order.  But  their  inclusion,  it  will 
also  be  observed,  is  merely  casual,  and  they  drop 
out  of  consideration  when  the  value  of  Ideas  is 
discussed  and  the  necessity  of  their  existence  is 
maintained.  This  is  in  accordance  with  the  com- 
mon habit  of  Plato,  to  name  together  groups  of 
intellectual  and  of  ethical  Ideas  as  if  the  argu- 
ment was  concerned  with  them  indiscriminately, 
and  then  quietly  to  drop  one  or  the  other  group. 
It  is  not  the  only  case  where  he  is  content  to  draw 
tacitly,  perhaps  unconsciously,  a  distinction  of 
prime  importance  to  his  philosophy. 

It  will  be  further  observed  that  all  through 
this  argument,  and  indeed  repeatedly  in  other 
Dialogues,  Plato  couples  beauty  with  justice,  or 
with  goodness,  as  if  they  belonged  to  the  same 
category ;  and  in  this  case  he  does  not  name  them 
together,  merely  to  drop  one  of  the  classes,  as  he 
does  when  he  includes  intellectual  generalizations 
with  them,  but  maintains  the  union  intimately  to 
the  end.  There  is  here,  then,  a  real  refusal,  or 
failure,  to  discriminate  between  aesthetics  and 
ethics  in  the  Ideal  sphere.  This,  however,  does 
not  mean  that  he  identified  beauty  and  goodness 
through  all  their  course,  for  there  were  many 
manifestations  of  beauty  which  he  condemned  as 
inimical  to  goodness;  and  it  decidedly  does  not 
mean,  as  the  Paterians  would  have  us  believe, 
that  his  primary  interest  was  in  the  beautiful. 


174  PLATONISM 

Laws  727D  foF  of  such  acsthctcs  hc  can  on  occasion  speak 
with  utter  scorn.  The  explanation  is,  rather, 
that  he  made  a  distinction  between  Ideal  beauty 
and  the  actual  manifestations  of  beauty. 

Only  once,  in  the  Hippias  Major,  did  Plato 
undertake  to  deal  with  the  beautiful  from  a 
purely  aesthetic  point  of  view,  and  here  the  near- 
est approach  to  a  definition,  after  many  trials,  is 
299b  that  beauty  might  be  called  "pleasure  through 
sight  and  hearing."  This  definition,  indeed,  he 
finally  rejects,  because  it  does  no  more  than  de- 
scribe the  effect  upon  us  of  beautiful  objects, 
whereas  the  beautiful  itself,  for  which  he  is  look- 
ing, would  be  the  cause  that  brings  together  into 
a  common  category  all  the  objects  that  so  affect 
us.  Yet  it  may  stand  as  Plato's  working  defini- 
tion of  the  beautiful,  and  fits  in  with  his  constant 
association  of  practical  aesthetics  and  hedonism, 
the  desire  of  beauty  with  the  desire  of  pleasure. 
Beautiful  objects  as  such  are  merely  one  division 
of  things  that  give  us  pleasure,  and  are  to  be  em- 
braced or  renounced,  like  all  such  things,  not  by  a 
standard  of  immediate  intensity  but  by  a  wider 
calculation  of  the  kind  of  pleasure  given.  Other 
things  being  equal,  the  more  beautiful  object  is 
preferable  to  the  less  beautiful,  just  as  generally 
the  intenser  pleasure  of  the  moment  is  prefer- 
able to  the  less  intense.  But  "other  things"  are 
by  no  means  always  equal;  the  larger  consider- 
ation of  life  may  command  us  to  condemn  a  par- 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  176 

ticular  manifestation  of  beauty,  as  it  may  bid  us 
reject  any  other  appeal  to  the  senses,  and  above 
this  faUible  principle  of  hedonism  is  the  moral 
law,  with  its  power  of  inhibition  upon  the  impulse 
of  all  desires.  Hence  it  follows  that  art  cannot 
be  left  to  work  under  the  canons  of  beauty  alone, 
independently  of  outside  control,  but  is  to  be 
judged  by  a  standard  embracing  interests  of  a 
far  wider  order ;  art  must  be  subservient  to  ethics. 
In  The  Republic  Plato,  himself  the  master  art-  * 
ist,  shuts  out  of  his  ideal  city  poets  and  artists  of 
high  renown,  men  of  whom  he  may  elsewhere 
speak  in  the  language  of  reverence,  because  the 
pleasure  derived  from  their  craft  seems  to  his 
austere  judgment  contrary  to  the  goal  of  happi- 
ness towards  which  he  is  straining.  It  is  even 
true  that  he  is  wont  to  look  with  a  touch  of  sus- 
picion on  art  in  itself,  just  as  sometimes  he  is 
hurried  by  zeal,  against  his  better  judgment,  to 
denounce  pleasure  in  itself.  He  seems  at  these 
moments  to  feel  that  the  tendency  of  art  is  al-  '^^el^o 
most  inevitably  to  strengthen  the  immediate  sen- 
sations against  the  inner  check,  and  that  there  is 
an  ancient  irreconcilable  feud  between  philo-  ibid.  607i 
sophy  and  poetry.  This,  however,  is  Plato 
troubled  in  spirit  by  too  pressing  a  vision  of  the 
perils  and  misfortunes  of  life;  in  his  calmer 
moods  he  recognizes  the  great  function  of  art  and 
poetry  in  education,  and  throughout  the  Laws 
there  are  passages  on  this  topic  replete  with 
sound  and  subtle  observation. 


176  PLATONISM 

But  it  is  not  my  intention  in  this  volume  of 
introductory  studies  to  enter  into  the  complicated 
task  of  unravelling  Plato's  aesthetics,  further 
than  to  show  how  and  why  that  question  is  in- 
volved in  the  question  of  his  ethics.  In  brief,  the 
practice  of  art,  as  he  saw  it,  is  parallel  with  the 
practice  of  the  virtues,  but  distinguished  by  the 
kind  of  pleasure  evoked.  When,  however,  we 
pass  to  the  Idea  behind  the  manifestations  of 
beauty  we  are  in  the  region  of  happiness,  just  as 
when  we  pass  from  considering  the  virtues  to  the 
moral  force  above  them.  And  as  happiness  ad- 
mits no  distinction  in  kind,  so  the  Idea  of  beauty 
merges  into  that  of  goodness.  Hence  there  is  no 
confusion,  granted  Plato's  general  point  of  view, 
as  every  true  Platonist  is  ready  to  grant,  in  his 
method  of  dealing  simultaneously  with  aesthetic 
and  ethical  Ideas. 

But  there  is  still  another  distinction  to  be 
made.  (I  trust  the  reader's  patience  is  not  ex- 
hausted; I  sometimes  fancy  that  the  best  defini- 
tion of  a  Platonist  would  be  "a  lover  of  distinc- 
tions.") In  the  passage  of  the  fifth  book  of  The 
Republic  to  which  we  are  referring,  just  before 
476a  the  paragraphs  actually  quoted,  Plato  speaks  of 
the  Ideas  of  justice  and  injustice,  good  and  evil, 
each  of  which  is  one  by  itself,  but  by  participa- 
tion in  acts  and  bodies  and  by  communion  one 
with  another,  has  the  appearance  of  being  many. 
Now  the  point  with  which  we  are  concerned  is 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  177 

the  inclusion  of  these  Ideas  of  evil  and  ugliness 
(the  latter,  Ideas  of  ugliness,  are  not  mentioned 
here,  but  they  are  so  included  in  other  passages 
of  similar  import)  with  those  of  goodness  and 
beauty.  Is  the  philosopher,  then,  as  a  lover  of 
Ideas,  one  who  loves  ugliness  and  injustice  by 
the  same  token  that  he  loves  beauty  and  jus- 
tice? The  answer  to  this  question  is  impHcit  in 
the  fact  that  here,  as  elsewhere,  when  Plato 
comes  to  draw  his  conclusions  and  apply  his 
moral,  he  silently  drops  these  so-to-speak  reverse 
Ideas  of  ugliness  and  injustice  out  of  considera- 
tion and  argues  as  if  he  had  named  only  beauty 
and  justice.  The  Ideas  of  ugliness  and  injustice 
are  not  properly  ethical — precisely  as  it  is  not 
ethical  to  be  ugly  or  unjust — but  are  of  the  na- 
ture of  intellectual  generalizations ;  they  are,  like 
other  intellectual  Ideas,  listed  with  the  ethical, 
and  then,  in  like  manner,  tacitly  ignored  when 
the  moral  application  is  made. 

It  is  clear,  then,  that  in  discussing  Plato's  doc- 
trine of  Ideas  we  have  to  deal  with  a  very  com- 
plex question.  First  of  all  we  must  set  apart 
notions  derived  from  the  similarity  perceived  in 
a  group  of  objects  or  from  quantitative  relations. 
With  these  must  be  placed  also  those  aesthetic 
and  ethical  notions  which  are  equally  derived  by 
generalizing  from  observation,  and  which  include 
ugliness  as  well  as  beauty,  unrighteousness  as 
well  as  righteousness.    All  these  are  Ideas  in  a 


178  PLATONISM 

way  and  have  their  own  reality;  but  they  are  in- 
tellectual in  their  origin  and  pertain  to  the  scien- 
tific rather  than  to  the  philosophic  life.  The  dif- 
ference lies  in  this,  that  in  the  procedure  of 
science  we  are  interested  in  acquiring  a  know- 
ledge of  the  Ideas,  whereas  in  the  procedure  of 
philosophy  we  are  interested  in  possessing  the 
Ideas  themselves.  Ideas,  as  Plato  was  supremely 
concerned  in  them,  and  as  they  constitute  the 
essence  of  what  the  world  has  rightly  known  as 
Platonism,  are  not  derived  intellectually,  but  are 
an  emphatic  assertion  of  the  unchanging  reality 
behind  moral  forces,  a  natural  development  of 
the  Socratic  affirmation  of  spiritual  truth. 

We  can  now  imderstand  why  Plato  saw  in  the 
rejection  or  acceptance  of  Ideas  the  line  dividing 
men  into  two  hostile  camps.  He  had  in  mind  one 
of  the  commonplace  distinctions  with  which  we 
are  perfectly  familiar  today  as  were  the  people 
of  Athens  in  his  day,  and  which  is  fraught  with 
far-reaching  consequences.  We  are  all  acquaint- 
ed with  the  man  who,  having  a  current  know- 
ledge of  history  and  the  world,  insists  fluently 
that  there  is  no  fixed  standard  of  beauty  or  jus- 
tice, and  who  overwhelms  us  with  illustrations 
to  prove  that  everything  regarded  as  beautiful  or 
just  by  one  people  and  at  one  age  is  to  another 
people  or  at  another  age  the  very  reverse  of 
beautiful  or  just.  Plato  would  admit  that  such 
men,  if  the  debate  is  kept  within  the  bounds  they 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  179 

prescribe,  are  entirely  right ;  there  is  nothing  ab- 
solutely fixed  in  particulars,  and  no  knowledge 
of  what  is  not  fixed.  But  he  would  add  that  this 
is  only  the  lower  side  of  the  truth.  The  fact  that 
all  peoples  and  all  ages  have  some  word,  more  or 
less  precise,  for  the  beautiful  and  the  just,  and 
have  the  same  motions  in  their  souls  towards  that 
which  they  call  by  these  words,  shows  that  some 
constant  force  is  at  work  through  all  the  variety 
of  its  manifestations.  The  objects  and  acts  that 
appeal  to  an  Australian  head-hunter  as  beauti- 
ful and  right  may  in  some  respects  be  quite  the 
contrary  of  what  would  receive  the  approbation 
of  a  Christian  bishop;  but  beauty  and  justice,  or 
rightness,  have  the  same  place  and  function  in 
the  soul  of  the  one  as  of  the  other.  These,  Plato 
would  say,  are  the  absolute  Ideas  which  both 
head-hunter  and  bishop  know,  whereas  in  the  ap- 
plication of  these  Ideas  to  particular  objects  and 
acts  they  fall  into  the  region  of  opinion.  Such, 
he  would  contend,  is  the  fact,  no  matter  whether 
you  acknowledge  it  or  not ;  but  he  would  add  that 
it  matters  a  great  deal  to  you  personally  whether 
you  acknowledge  it.  If  you  admit  the  reality  of 
the  Idea  of  justice,  you  will  love  the  Idea,  and 
your  love  will  be  established  upon  something 
fixed;  you  will  not  only  be  confirmed  in  your 
readiness  to  act  in  accordance  with  the  principles 
of  justice  as  these  are  formulated  by  your  own 
experience  and  by  that  of  the  society  in  which 


180  PLATONISM 

you  live  (whence  all  the  practical  virtues),  but 
you  will  be  led  to  search  deeply  into  your  con- 
sciousness for  principles  that  approach  more 
nearly  to  the  absolute  standard  and  authority  of 
an  Idea.  You  will  be  a  promoter  of  your  own 
welfare  and  of  society's,  a  guide  and  governor 
among  men  who  are  groping  towards  wisdom,  a 
philosopher.  On  the  other  hand,  if  you  reject  the 
Idea  of  justice  and  say  there  is  nothing  fixed  and 
unalterable  behind  the  changing  fashions  of  law 
and  custom,  nothing  at  once  the  cause  and  goal 
of  these  fashions,  if  you  say  that  justice  is  merely 
a  name  for  acts  which  may  have  nothing  in  com- 
mon, you  are  taking  away  all  that  gives  to  justice 
a  firm  hold  upon  the  human  heart.  You  will 
scarcely  retain  any  deep  love  for  what  is  only  a 
name;  you  may  conform  to  the  popular  rules  of 
justice  from  habit  or  for  prudential  reasons,  but, 
really,  one  may  well  be  slow  in  trusting  you  very 
far  out  of  sight,  or  in  placing  much  reliance  on 
your  character — indeed,  one  may  ask  whether, 
properly  speaking,  you  have  such  a  thing  as  a 
character.  If  what  is  just  to-day  was  unjust 
yesterday  and  may  be  unjust  to-morrow,  and 
there  is  nothing  behind  these  changes,  one  can't 
see  why  you  shouldn't  change,  at  your  own  con- 
venience, without  waiting  for  the  slower-moving 
opinions  of  society.  And  certainly,  supposing 
you  are  a  lover  of  anything  besides  yourself,  one 
cannot  think  of  you  as  a  philosopher,  but,  if  you 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  181 

will  pardon  a  rather  ugly-sounding  word,  as  a 
philodoxer. 

These  Ideas,  then,  which  play  so  important  a 
role  in  Plato's  philosophy  and  have  for  these 
thousands  of  years  haunted  the  world  as  impal- 
pable embodiments  of  truth,  are  primarily  ethi- 
cal in  their  nature;  and  we  have  this  pragmatic 
proof  of  their  existence,,  that  without  them  we 
can  discover  no  sound  basis  of  morality.  They 
are,  in  fact,  the  very  realities  of  our  spiritual  life, 
in  comparison  with  which  all  the  solid-seeming 
phenomena  of  earth  are  things  evanescent  and 
unreal.  But  in  what  does  their  reahty  subsist? 
What  are  they  in  themselves?  To  answer  this 
question  we  must  go  back  to  the  psychological 
analysis  of  morality. 

The  central  truth  of  dualism  is  a  recognition  of 
the  absolute  distinction  between  the  two  elements 
of  our  conscious  being  and  an  admission  of  the 
impossibihty  of  finding  any  rationally  positive 
explanation  of  the  mutual  interaction  of  these 
two  elements.  We  know  that  our  concupiscent 
soul  is,  or  ought  to  be,  under  the  jurisdiction  of 
the  spirit,  yet  our  analytic  reason  can  express 
this  jurisdiction  only  in  terms  of  suspension  and 
an  inner  check.  But  the  human  mind  cannot  rest 
comfortably  in  this  state  of  mere  negation;  it  is 
impelled  by  its  very  nature  to  seek  some  positive 
expression  for  these  superrational  facts  of  con- 
sciousness, and  it  is  just  here  that  another  fac- 


182  PLATONISM 

ulty,  the  imagination,  steps  in  to  perform  what 
was  impossible  to  the  reason.  In  its  lower  ac- 
tivity the  imagination  is  the  power  by  which  the 
sensations  derived  through  the  organs  of  sight 
and  the  rest  are  projected  outside  of  the  mind  as 
objects  of  perception.  The  imagination  can  also 
go  beyond  this  function  and,  after  recombining 
at  pleasure  the  data  of  perception,  can  project 
these  new  combinations  into  the  void  as  things 
having  to  the  mind  a  certain  degree  of  in- 
dependent existence.  Thus,  the  landscape  con- 
ceived by  the  artist  or  the  character  conceived 
by  the  poet  is  thrown  out  into  the  world  of  ob- 
jective existences.  And  so,  by  a  still  higher  ac- 
tivity, the  imagination  essays  to  deal  with  the 
immediate  data  of  consciousness,  as  it  deals  with 
those  of  sensation.  Justice,  which  to  the  reason 
was  only  a  negation  of  our  positive  impulses,  is, 
like  the  creation  of  the  artist,  projected  outside 
of  the  soul  so  as  to  become  a  positive  entity  with 
a  life  and  habitation  of  its  own,  and  the  soul  un- 
der control  of  moral  force  seems  itself  to  be  reach- 
ing out  to  touch  and  take  into  its  possession  that 
which  is,  in  a  way,  its  own  creation. 

These  imaginative  projections  of  the  facts  of 
moral  consciousness  are  the  true  Platonic  ideas. 
Hence  their  peculiarity:  though  the  most  inti- 
mate reaHties  of  experience,  things  of  which  our 
knowledge  is  so  firm  and  sure  that  of  other  things 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  183 

we  seem  in  comparison  to  have  only  opinion,  yet 
the  moment  we  apply  our  discursive  reason  to 
them,  the  moment  we  undertake  to  describe  them 
in  intellectual  terms,  they  melt  away  into  noth- 
ingness, like  the  dew  in  the  clear  dry  breath  of 
the  morning.  Hence,  too,  the  varying  terms 
which  Plato  gives  to  their  operation.  They  are 
always,  as  products  of  the  imagination,  objective 
entities,  separate  (chdrista)  from  the  world  of 
phenomena  and  from  the  soul  itself,  but  at  one 
time  he  may  speak  of  them  as  patterns  {para- 
deigmata),  laid  up  in  heaven  or  in  some  unde- 
fined region,  to  which  we  look  as  models  to  mould 
our  conduct  by,  or,  at  another  time,  he  may  speak 
of  them  as  visitants  to  the  soul,  neither  exactly 
corporeal  nor  yet  incorporeal,  by  whose  presence  sophut  247a 
(parousia)  we  possess  the  qualities  of  which  they 
are  the  substance,  or,  more  vaguely  still,  as  mere 
forces  (dynameis)  that  play  upon  us  and  make  /w.  uim 
us  what  we  are.  The  looseness  of  Plato's  termin- 
ology would  indicate  that,  to  him  at  least,  it  is 
of  relatively  slight  importance  how  we  take  them 
to  be,  so  long  as  we  accept  their  being  and  bow 
to  their  authority.  The  point  of  supreme  im- 
portance for  the  Platonizer  today  is,  not  that  he 
should  be  able  to  define  the  operation  of  Ideas, 
but  that  he  should  avoid  the  two  contrary  errors 
of  the  rationalist  and  the  romanticist. 

On  the  one  hand  the  literature  of  philosophy 
is  replete  with  the  ghastly  failures  of  the  ration- 


184  PLATONISM 

alist,  who,  perceiving  the  illogical  nature  of  these 
forms,  has  either  rejected  them  and  their  author 
altogether  in  the  name  of  reason,  or,  by  attempt- 
ing some  intellectual  "reconciliation,"  has  re- 
duced them  to  mere  nominalistic  categories  of  the 
reason  and  so  emptied  them  of  all  vital  signifi- 
cance. This  denial  of  the  office  of  the  imagina- 
tion is  particularly  the  error  of  metaphysics,  of 
which  we  shall  have  more  to  say  in  our  discussion 
of  the  Parmenides. 

But  the  other  error  is  equally  wide-spread  and 
even  more  lethal  in  its  consequences.  I  mean  the 
error  of  the  romanticist  who  sees  clearly  enough 
that  Ideas  are  the  creation  of  the  image-making 
faculty,  but  treats  them  as  if  they  were  somehow 
created  by  a  purely  spontaneous  power  ex  nihilo, 
and  so  deprives  them  of  eternal  and  authorita- 
tive validity.  This  is  peculiarly  the  fault  of  the 
self-styled  Platonists  of  modern  times,  but  it  may 
be  traced  back  to  the  beginnings  of  romanticism, 
if  not  to  the  ancient  school  of  Neoplatonists. 
Hegel  laid  his  finger  on  one  of  its  manifestations 
in  his  criticism  of  romantic  irony:  "It  was 
Friedrich  von  Schlegel  who  first  brought  forward 
this  idea,  and  Ast  repeated  it,  saying,  'The  most 
ardent  love  of  all  beauty  in  the  Idea,  as  in  life, 
inspires  Socrates'  words  with  inward,  unfathom- 
able life.'  This  life  is  now  said  to  be  irony !  But 
this  irony  issues  from  the  Fichtean  philosophy, 
and  is  an  essential  point  in  the  comprehension  of 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  186 

the  conceptions  of  most  recent  times.  It  is  when 
subjective  consciousness  maintains  its  independ- 
ence of  everything,  that  it  says,  'It  is  I  who 
through  my  educated  thoughts  can  annul  all  de- 
terminations of  right,  morality,  good,  &c.,  be- 
cause I  am  clearly  master  of  them,  and  I  know 
that  if  anything  seems  good  to  me  I  can  easily 
subvert  it,  because  things  are  only  true  to  me  in 
so  far  as  they  please  me  now.'  This  irony  is  thus 
only  a  trifling  with  everything,  and  it  can  trans- 
form all  things  into  show:  to  this  subjectivity 
nothing  is  any  longer  serious."^  But  the  evil  has 
persisted  in  romantic  writers  who  are  serious 
enough  in  their  way.  It  is  not  the  misuse  of  So- 
cratic  irony,  but  a  more  subtle  perversion  of  Pla- 
tonic truth,  which  one  will  find,  for  instance,  in 
such  a  writer  as  Professor  Santayana,  when  he 
maintains  that  "rehgion  and  poetry  are  identical 
in  essence,  and  differ  merely  in  the  way  in  which 
they  are  attached  to  practical  affairs."  By  this 
he  would  argue,  if  I  imderstand  his  drift,  that 
the  ideal  world  is  a  purely  spontaneous  evoca- 
tion, and  as  in  poetry  every  man  is  free  to  create 
what  images  he  will,  so  it  is  in  religion.  "The 
impassioned  soul,"  he  says,  "must  pass  beyond 
the  understanding,  or  else  go  unsatisfied ;  and  un- 
less it  be  as  disciplined  as  it  is  impassioned  it  will 
not  tolerate  dissatisfaction.    From  what  quarter, 

'  History  of  Philosophy,  translated  by  £.  S.  Haldaoe,  I, 
400. 


186  PLATONISM 

then,  will  it  draw  the  wider  views,  the  deeper  har- 
monies, which  it  craves?  Only  from  the  imagi- 
nation. There  is  no  other  faculty  left  to  invoke. 
The  imagination,  therefore,  must  furnish  to  re- 
ligion and  to  metaphysics  those  large  ideas  tinc- 
tured with  passion,  those  supersensible  forms 
shrouded  in  awe,  in  which  alone  a  mind  of  great 
sweep  and  vitality  can  find  its  congenial  objects." 
But  these  Ideas  are  of  the  nature  of  things  that 
cannot  be  verified.  "Faith  and  the  higher  reason 
of  the  metaphysician  are  therefore  forms  of 
imagination  believed  to  be  avenues  to  truth,  as 
dreams  or  oracles  may  sometimes  be  truthful,  not 
because  their  necessary  correspondence  to  truth 
can  be  demonstrated,  for  then  they  would  be  por- 
tions of  science  [that  is,  of  what  is  known,  in 
contrast  with  Ideas  which  would  be  matters  of 
opinion],  but  because  a  man  dwelling  on  those 
intuitions  is  conscious  of  a  certain  moral  trans- 
formation, of  a  certain  warmth  and  energy  of 
life."*  Now  there  is  much  in  all  this  that  seems 
to  have  the  ring  of  true  Platonism,  but  on  closer 
investigation  it  will  prove  to  indicate  an  attitude 
towards  things  of  the  spirit  which  Plato  would 
have  met  with  scorn  and  denial.  Plato  would 
not  say  precisely  with  Santayana  (we  take  him 
as  typical  of  romantic  Platonism)  that  the 
imagination  furnishes  to  religion  those  large 
Ideas  in  which  alone  a  great  mind  feels  itself  at 

'  Poetry  and  Religion,  pp.  v,  6,  8. 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  187 

home,  but  rather  that  the  imagination  gives  vi- 
tality to  the  moral  facts  which  are  furnished  it 
by  rehgion.  And  Plato  would  have  utterly  de- 
nied that  the  correspondence  of  Ideas  with  truth 
cannot  be  demonstrated;  on  the  contrary  he 
would  have  asserted  that  the  work  of  the  imagi- 
nation, unless  it  answers  in  the  fullest  measure 
to  known  truth,  is  not  an  Idea  at  all.  Ideas  are 
the  product  of  the  imagination,  but  of  the  imagi- 
nation working  upon  material  given  to  it  by  the 
immutable  law  of  morahty;  the  truth  is  present 
to  our  consciousness  before  this  act  of  transfor- 
mation, and  has  no  more  authority,  though  it 
may  be  clothed  with  more  persuasion,  after  it 
has  been  evoked  for  the  inner  eye  as  a  form  than 
it  had  previously  to  that  evocation. 

I  may  seem  to  have  dwelt  overlong  on  this 
perversion,  but  the  right  use  of  the  imagination 
is  of  the  very  essence  of  Idealism.  It  is  true  that 
the  power  of  the  Platonic  philosophy  over  the 
minds  and  hearts  of  men  is  attributable  in  large 
measure  to  its  insistence  on  the  immediate  vision 
of  moral  forces  as  Ideal  entities;  but  it  behooves 
the  Platonist  to  remember  also  that  the  imagina- 
tion is  the  most  treacherous  and  headstrong  of 
all  our  faculties  if  once  it  is  permitted  to  slip  the 
leash  of  moral  control.  The  romantic  spontan- 
eity, which  lures  the  imagination  with  a  promise 
of  irresponsibility  in  creating  its  moral  and  re- 
ligious Ideas,  is  a  meretricious  parody  of  Platon- 


188 


PLATONISM 


Republic  497D 


ism;  its  end  is  a  bitter  disillusion  in  the  reality  of 
misery.  Alas  that,  surveying  the  many  flatteries 
addressed  to  the  soul  under  the  guise  of  idealism, 
we  must  say  in  words  that  were  so  often  in  the 
mouth  of  Plato  himself:  How  difficult  are  all 
things  fair!  how  treacherous  the  desire  of  them  I 
Such  is  the  function,  such  are  the  hmitations, 
of  that  activity  of  the  soul  which  produces  the 
Platonic  Ideas.  The  name  "imagination,"  I 
need  scarcely  add,  does  not  itself  occur  in  Plato, 
as  indeed  there  is  no  word  in  classical  Greek  quite 
corresponding  to  its  connotation ;  but  I  have  not 
scrupled  to  apply  our  modem  term  to  the  process 
by  which  the  ethical  facts  of  consciousness  are  not 
only  projected  outside  of  the  soul  as  independ- 
ent entities,  but  are  represented  as  images  in 
Republic  so7«  some  way  visible.  Vision,  Plato  observes,  is  the 
noblest  of  our  perceptions,  the  sense  that  seems 
to  bring  us  into  closest  intimacy  with  the  objects 
of  the  phenomenal  world;  hence  it  is  natural  that, 
in  the  groping  language  of  symbolism,  our  know- 
ledge of  Ideas  should  come  to  the  soul  by  a  spirit- 
ual organ  similar  in  its  operation  to  that  of  the 
physical  eye.  We  see  Ideas,  Plato  says,  by  the 
inner  eye,  "the  vision  of  the  understanding" — 
which  is  his  nearest  approach  to  a  technical  term 
for  the  faculty  of  the  imagination  regarded  as  a 
passive  instrument.  In  the  sixth  book  of  The 
Republic  (following  the  conclusion  of  the  fifth 
book  to  which  we  have  already  referred)    he 


Symposium 
219a 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  189 

elaborates  the  metaphor  in  detail,  comparing  the 
ethical  Ideas  in  the  soul  with  the  models  which 
an  artist  studies  in  the  work  of  imitation.  He  is 
even  so  deeply  convinced  of  the  value  of  this 
simihtude  as  to  carry  it  beyond  the  mere  usage 
of  rhetoric  into  the  region  of  mythology,  as  is  his 
wont  in  matters  that  transcend  the  reach  of  ra- 
tional definition.  For  is  it,  he  would  seem  to  ask, 
after  all  only  metaphor?  Does  our  imagination, 
as  we  think  in  our  cooler  moods,  really  create 
these  Ideas  as  phantoms  of  its  own  evocation,  or 
may  it  be  that  they  are  in  fact  bodied  forms  that 
show  themselves  to  us  in  our  moments  of  exalta- 
tion, creatures  like  to  the  gods  who  have  their 
home  on  Olympus,  yet  at  their  own  choice  may 
be  revealed  to  us  in  dreams  or  the  more  blessed 
hours  of  waking,  recognized,  for  the  dulness  of 
our  senses,  only  as  they  fade  away  into  the  air : 

"By  his  pace  in  leaving  us  I  knew, 
Without  all  question,  'twas  a  God;  the  Gods  are 
easily  known."* 

And  so  we  have  the  entrancing  fable  of  the 
Phaedrus,  wherein  the  Ideas  are  no  longer  de- 
scribed vaguely  as  images  floating  before  the 
soul,  but  as  shining  realities,  existing  for  ever  in 
their  own  light  beyond  the  confines  of  the  high- 
est heaven.  Thither  the  soul,  when  purified  of 
her  mortal  passions,  drives  in  her  winged  car 

*  Iliad  xii,  70,  Chapman's  translation. 


190  PLATONISM 

with  the  lordly  procession  of  the  gods,  and,  reach- 
ing the  apex  of  the  skies,  for  the  time  of  a  celes- 
tial revolution  looks  out  into  those  unearthly 
spaces,  and  beholds  there  the  divine  spectacle  of 
justice  itself  and  temperance  itself,  even  know- 
ledge itself,  not  as  these  things  are  guessed  at  in 
the  shifting  and  uncertain  phenomena  descried 
by  the  piu*blind  eyes  of  the  body,  but  in  their 
everlasting  veracity  and  glory.  That  is  the  great 
and  joyous  feast  of  the  soul — the  eucharist  of  the 
philosopher,  whereat  he  partakes  of  the  eternal 
substance,  and  is  made  aware  of  his  spiritual 
kinship  with  the  gods.  Is  the  fable  a  delusion, 
a  mere  hunger  of  the  brain,  the  consolation  of  an 
innocent  make-beheve?  How  far,  in  other 
words,  was  Plato  consciously  turning  his  psy- 
chology into  allegory,  and  how  far  did  he  regard 
his  mythical  account  of  Ideas  as  the  shadow  of 
an  immortal  revelation?  I  for  one  would  not 
care  to  say,  holding  that  it  is  of  the  very  essence 
of  Platonism  to  leave  these  high  matters  in  their 
own  evasive  liberty;  but  I  know  that  Emerson 
wrote  from  the  same  true  experience  of  the  soul 
in  his  chapter  on  Illusions: 

"There  is  no  chance,  and  no  anarchy,  in  the 
universe.  All  is  system  and  gradation.  Every  god 
is  there  sitting  in  his  sphere.  The  young  mortal 
enters  the  hall  of  the  firmament ;  there  is  he  alone 
with  them  alone,  they  pouring  on  him  benedic- 
tions and  gifts,  and  beckoning  him  up  to  their 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  191 

thrones.  On  the  instant,  and  incessantly,  fall 
snow-storms  of  illusions.  He  fancies  himself  in 
a  vast  crowd  which  sways  this  way  and  that,  and 
whose  movement  and  doings  he  must  obey:  he 
fancies  himself  poor,  orphaned,  insignificant. 
The  mad  crowd  drives  hither  and  thither,  now 
furiously  commanding  this  thing  to  be  done,  now 
that.  What  is  he  that  he  should  resist  their  will, 
and  think  or  act  for  himself?  Every  moment, 
new  changes,  and  new  showers  of  deceptions,  to 
baffle  and  distract  him.  And  when,  by  and  by, 
for  an  instant,  the  air  clears,  and  the  cloud  lifts 
a  little,  there  are  the  gods  still  sitting  around  him 
on  their  thrones — they  alone  with  him  alone." 

And  as  the  Platonic  vision  unrolls  in  a  mythi- 
cal space  that  is  not  the  expansion  of  this  world, 
so  it  falls  in  a  time  that  is  not  measured  by  the 
interval  between  a  man's  birth  and  dying.  The 
same  magic  of  the  imagination  which  placed  the 
adventure  of  the  soul  in  a  region  beyond  the  ut- 
termost sphere  of  the  heavens  carries  the  event 
back  to  a  remote  age,  to  a  life  before  the  begin- 
ning of  these  terrestrial  days.  Our  knowledge  of 
Ideas,  which  now  is  of  things  at  once  visible  and 
invisible,  becomes  by  this  act  as  it  were  a  dim 
and  transient  memory  of  what  the  soul  did  verit- 
ably behold,  face  to  face,  in  some  prenatal  exist- 
ence. This  is  the  meaning  of  metempsychosis 
and  "reminiscence"  as  they  are  taught  in  the 
Meno  and  elsewhere,  the  setting  in  a  mythical 


192  PLATONISM 

time  and  space  of  an  experience  which,  philo- 
sophically considered,  belongs  to  neither;  for  the 
Ideas,  though  known  in  time,  are  eternal,  and 
though  seen  by  the  eye  of  the  spirit,  are  not  to  be 
found  among  the  phenomena  that  fill  the  bound- 
aries of  physical  space.  They  are  as  the  gods 
sitting  on  their  unshakable  thrones,  seen  through 
the  drifting  snow-storms  of  illusions. 

He  in  whom  the  memory  of  this  great  adven- 
ture stirs  is  filled  with  longing  to  join  the  gods 
once  again  in  their  upward  procession  within  the 
vault  of  the  sky.  So  haunting  is  the  recollection 
of  his  joy  that  in  comparison  with  it  all  other 
satisfactions  dwindle  to  worthless  make-beheve. 
Hence  the  theory  of  an  Uranian  love  that  carries 
the  desires  of  the  soul  upwards  to  the  participa- 
tion in  Ideas,  hke,  yet  very  unlike,  the  common, 
or  Pandemic,  love  that  craves  the  pleasure  of 
earthly  possessions.  In  the  greatest  of  the  myth- 
ological Dialogues,  the  Symposium,  Socrates 
tells  a  pretty  tale  which  he  pretends  to  have  heard 
from  the  lips  of  an  inspired  woman  of  Mantinea. 
Love,  he  says,  is  not  a  god,  neither  is  he  a  mortal, 
but  a  mighty  daemon,  begotten  of  the  divine 
Poros,  or  Abundance,  and  conceived  of  the  mor- 
tal Penia,  or  Penury,  whose  ofiice  it  is  to  act  as 
a  mediator  between  gods  and  men.  He  it  is  that 
creates  in  us  "the  thirst  that  from  the  soul  doth 
rise,"  the  insatiable  longings  for  wisdom,  which 
is  the  most  beautiful  of  all  things.    Such  a  desire 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  193 

is  not  known  to  the  gods,  for  beauty  and  goodness 
in  perfection  are  already  theirs,  and  desire  is  only 
of  that  which  is  not  possessed.  Neither  is  it  felt 
by  the  ignorant  among  men,  for  this  is  the  very 
evil  of  ignorance  that  he  who  has  no  part  in 
beauty  or  goodness  or  wisdom  should  yet  be  con- 
tent with  his  lot;  feeling  no  want,  he  has  no  de- 
sire. Love,  the  Uranian  love,  is  philosophy ;  and 
the  true  philosopher  is  he  who,  having  in  memory 
the  vision  of  the  celestial  images,  possessing 
them  yet  not  possessing  them,  feels  the  whole 
current  of  his  being  turned  to  the  one  supernatu- 
ral desire  to  snatch  them  out  of  the  shadowy  past 
and  make  them  the  present  palpable  realities  of 
his  life.  Every  act,  every  wish,  every  thought, 
should  be  the  perfect  imitation,  rather  the  com- 
plete embodiment,  of  an  Idea.  Imagination  is 
not  an  empty  dream,  not  a  vacant  and  wander- 
ing liberty,  but  the  master  of  things  as  they  are 
and  the  moulder  of  his  will. 

It  is  this  emotional  element  that  distinguishes 
the  Platonic  philosophy  from  the  other  schools, 
and  has  made  it  an  undying  force  in  the  practical 
world;  and  this  emotional  element  must  be  re- 
garded, I  think,  as  the  indispensable  servant  of 
truth,  if  philosophy  is  to  be  a  life  and  not  an  idle 
disputation.  But  I  dare  not  say  that  it  has 
passed  mto  wide  acceptance  without  bringing 
grave  perils  in  its  train.  Plato  himself  may  have 
taken  great  pains  to  discriminate  theoretically 


194  PLATONISM 

between  the  love  of  ideal  beauty,  which  is  akin  to 
the  love  of  endurance  and  temperance  and  wis- 
dom and  all  the  chorus  of  the  virtues,  and  the 
other  love  which  is  not  ideal  at  all,  but  a  license 
of  the  imagination  or  a  lust  of  the  flesh;  but  it 
needs  a  strong  man  to  maintain  such  a  distinc- 
tion, when  all  the  powers  of  the  world,  together 
with  the  subtler  power  of  self-love,  make  for  con- 
fusion. It  is  thus  not  without  reason  that  Pla- 
tonic love  has  often  passed  into  a  jest,  and  some- 
times into  a  reproach.  Nor  can  Plato  for  this  be 
held  entirely  guiltless.  There  are  passages  of 
the  Symposium,  and  more  particularly  of  the 
Phaedrus,  in  which  the  passionate  colour  of  his 
language  so  envelops  the  allurement  of  particu- 
lar objects  that  some  effort  of  the  mind  is  re- 
quired to  remember  the  ideal  beauty  of  which 
they  are  supposed  to  be  the  manifestations.  The 
danger  is  heightened  when  he  speaks  with  curious 
lack  of  indignation  of  pleasures  which  the  world 
has  agreed  to  hold  unnatural  and  to  reject  with 
instinctive  abomination.  Yet  in  these  few  iso- 
lated passages  where  the  attraction  of  sensuous 
beauty  seems  for  the  moment  to  have  veiled  his 
purer  ethical  vision,  we  do  him  a  great  wrong  if 
we  fail  to  remember  that  it  is  a  passing  cloud 
before  the  sun  of  the  soul,  not  an  eclipse.  We 
need  then  to  turn  to  the  strange  confession  of 
Alcibiades  at  the  close  of  the  Symposium,  and  to 
learn  again  how  rigidly  beauty  and  all  the  seduc- 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  195 

tions  of  pleasure  were  held  in  subjection  to  the 
refraining  will.  The  Socrates  of  Plato  may  have 
portrayed  himself  playfully  as  a  slave  to  any  Thcages  i28b 
beautiful  body  and  as  wise  only  in  erotic  lore;  '^J^^'""" 
when  it  came  to  the  test  of  action  he  could  master 
the  lawless  impulses  of  the  flesh  unflinchingly 
and,  as  it  seems,  without  a  pang  of  regret. 
Those  who  dwelt  with  him  and  understood  his 
manner  of  speech  knew  well  enough  that  all  his 
babble  about  the  pursuit  of  beautiful  bodies  was 
but  a  veil  of  irony  thrown  before  the  hunger  of 
his  soul  for  fulfilment  of  its  unearthly  love. 

The  ideal  world,  created  or,  it  may  be,  ob- 
scurely grasped  by  the  imagination,  is  thus  at 
once  an  illusion  and  a  reality,  with  this  differ- 
ence, that  when  we  deal  with  philosophy  as  a 
mere  dead  corpus  of  speculation  these  Ideas  fade 
away  into  an  illusory  make-believe,  whereas  such 
is  the  constitution  of  our  spiritual  nature  that  the 
more  we  take  philosophy  as  a  principle  of  life 
the  more  vivid  and  real  do  they  become.  That  is 
a  truth  which  can  be  demonstrated  only  by  liv- 
ing, not  by  argument.  But  of  the  facts  of  ethi- 
cal experience  underlying  the  Ideas  there  is  no 
such  halting  tale,  no  question  at  all  of  make- 
believe.  Here  we  have  not  to  do  with  the  meta- 
phorical "eye  of  the  understanding,"  but  with 
that  form  of  progressive  knowledge,  rather  with 
the  only  immediate  and  veritable  knowledge, 
which  Plato  designated  as  dialectic — that  is,  the 


J 


196  PLATONISM 

philosophy  of  the  soul  discoursing  with  herself  of 
the  pure  intuitions  of  consciousness,  and  so  pass- 
ing ever  upwards  to  larger  and  more  comprehen- 
sive truth.  The  parallel  processes  of  that  ascent, 
dialectical  and  ideal,  may  be  described  somewhat 
as  follows.  Let  us  suppose  that  a  certain  plea- 
sure is  presented  to  a  man.  His  natural  desire 
is  forthwith  to  reach  out  for  this  pleasure ;  but  he 
is  made  to  pause.  This  power  of  suspension, 
which  to  Locke  was  the  substitute  for  the  free 
will,  and  which  I  have  termed  the  inner  check 
or,  more  precisely  in  the  language  of  Plato,  the 
daemonic  opposition,  intervenes  between  desire 
and  the  reaching  out  for  fulfilment.  The  man 
has  time  to  calculate  from  experience  or  precept, 
half  unwittingly  it  may  be,  whether  it  will  be  bet- 
ter to  grant  himself  this  pleasure  or  to  forgo  it. 
The  result  of  this  act  of  suspension,  whether  it 
end  in  permission  or  negation,  and  whether  the 
judgment  of  ultimate  pleasure  and  pain  be  right 
or  wrong,  is  the  virtue  of  temperance,  and  with 
it  comes  the  feeling  of  happiness.^  That  is  the 
dialectical  certainty,  what  we  know  by  immedi- 
ate and  incontrovertible  evidence.  But  with 
this  certainty  there  rises  before  the  man's  imagi- 
nation, if  he  reflects  on  his  state,  the  Idea  of 
temperance  as  a  visible  power  or  presence,  so  al- 
luring in  itself  that  beside  it  the  object  of  his 
physical  desire  appears  mean  and  ephemeral.  If 
his  judgment  was  led  to  veto  that  desire,  it  will 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  197 

seem  to  him  that  his  act  of  restraint  was  merely 
the  choice  in  its  place  of  this  more  desirable 
image;  the  love  of  the  Idea  has  driven  out  the 
baser  love  of  the  flesh.  If  his  judgment  granted 
the  desire  as  good,  then  it  will  seem  to  him  as  if 
this  desired  object  were  indeed  beautiful,  but 
beautiful  only  as  a  shadow  or  receptacle  of  the 
overflowing  loveliness  of  the  Idea. 

Now  suppose  this  event  of  the  soul,  if  I  may 
so  call  it,  is  followed,  as  in  life  it  will  be,  by  other 
events  in  which  various  desires  more  or  less  simi- 
lar in  nature  are  involved.  Out  of  the  grouping 
of  these  events  will  arise  a  larger  experience  of 
the  happiness  invariably  attendant  on  the  inhibit- 
ing power  and  a  clearer  consciousness  of  this 
power  itself  as  the  determining  element  of  the 
soul's  true  welfare.  We  grow  thereby  in  dialec- 
tical knowledge.  And  with  this  growth  there  fol- 
lows a  like  enlargement  of  the  ethical  imagina- 
tion. The  Idea  of  temperance  comes  to  embrace 
more  details  and  fuller  reality,  and  to  show  on  its 
face  a  more  radiant  charm;  and  as  our  love  of  the 
Idea  is  enhanced,  the  desire  of  any  particular 
pleasure  dwindles  in  comparison.  With  larger 
dialectical  knowledge  the  Idea  of  temperance  is 
taken  up  into  a  more  comprehensive  form,  into 
the  Idea  of  fortitude,  it  may  be,  as  the  soul's  vir- 
tue of  resistance  to  all  temptations,  whether  of 
desire  or  of  aversion,  hope  or  fear;  and  this  Idea 
again  may  be  carried  up  into  the  still  larger  Idea 


198  PLATONISM 

of  wisdom,  and  ever  onward  to  the  supreme  Idea 
of  the  Good. 
Symposium  And  SO,  as  it  were  by  the  steps  of  an  ascending 
stairway,  we  have  reached  the  summit  of  Plato's 
dialectic  and  of  human  experience,  to  that  Idea 
of  the  Good  which  to  the  practical  mind  of  the 
writer  of  the  Moralia  Magna  seemed  a  fantastic 
unreality,  but  to  the  inward-looking  eye  of  the 
soul  is  the  one  supreme  reality.  It  is  not  to  be 
wondered  at  that  certain  of  Plato's  contempo- 
raries were  made  dizzy  by  the  attempt  to  gaze 
directly  at  this  luminary  of  truth,  as  the  eye  of 
the  body  is  blinded  by  meeting  the  unveiled  radi- 
ance of  the  sun,  or  that  tradition  should  have  soon 
gathered  strange  tales  abouf  the  lectures  in  which 
he  unfolded  his  theories.*^  ( Plato  himself  virtu- 
Repubijc  506D  ally  admitted  that  no  definition  of  the  Good  was 
possible,  since  there  is  nothing  beyond  it  from 
which  further  light  could  be  obtained,  and  there 
is  no  way  of  explaining  why  we  desire  that  which 
is  the  end  of  all  desiring.  ^  The  only  device  for 
turning  the  eye  of  the  soul  thitherward  is  not  by 
endeavouring  to  define  the  undefinable,  but  by 
pointing  out  the  direction  to  be  taken  by  those 
who  would  approach  it;  as  Plato  has  done  sym- 
^Bk"Jii*'  bolically  in  the  wonderful  allegory  of  the  cave, 
and,  more  analytically,  in  the  discussion,  follow- 
ing this  allegory,  of  the  propaedeutic  training  in 

^  For   example,   the   often-quoted   story   of   Aristoxenus, 
^  Elements  of  Harmony  ii,  80. 


DOCTRINE  OF  mEAS  199 

abstract  thought.®  It  is  possible  that  in  the  lec- 
tures devoted  to  this  preliminary  training  Plato 
may  have  been  careless  in  his  use  of  terms,  but 
two  things  are  certain:  the  alleged  confusion  of 
his  mathematical  with  his  ethical  Ideas,  on  which 
Aristotle  laid  so  much  stress,  is,  as  we  shall  see 
in  our  study  of  Plato's  science,  a  disastrous  mis- 
understanding of  his  method;  and  the  tradition 
of  an  esoteric  doctrine,  as  distinct  from  the  sup- 
posedly popular  exposition  of  his  philosophy  in 
the  Dialogues,  has  not  the  slightest  foundation 
in  fact.  The  Dialogues,  as  we  have  them,  carry 
the  mind  as  far  as  it  can  go,  further  than  most 
minds  are  willing  to  follow,  and  the  notion  of  a 
secret  truth  still  beyond  is  merely  the  hugger- 
muggery  of  an  age  which  was  losing  its  power  to 
discriminate  between  thinking  and  wishing  to 
think.  What,  in  the  name  of  intelligence,  should 
that  mystical  doctrine  be?  If  there  were  no  other 
damning  evidence,  the  silly  allusions  to  this  enig- 
matic teaching  and  the  statement  that  Plato 
never  had  written  and  never  would  write  down 
his  true  principles  are  sufficient  to  prove  the  so- 
called  Platonic  Epistles  a  forgery.^ 

•  The  scholium  to  Gorgiat  506c  puts  the  case  well : 
"For  the  Good,  as  the  end,  is  in  itself  undefinable.  Where- 
fore it  is  here  set  forth  by  means  of  negation  of  what  it 
seems  to  be,  as  for  instance  that  it  is  not  pleasure."  And  so 
on  of  its  treatment  in  other  Dialogues. 

'  Ch.  Huit,  La  Vie  ei  I'oeuvre  de  Platon,  I,  chap,  v,  §§  7 
and  8  (the  two  flections  by  an  oversight  are  both  numbered 


200  PLATONISM 

But  if  we  cannot  define  the  supreme  Idea — 
since  it  is  the  ethical  fact  which  must  be  used  to 
give  meaning  to  all  our  ethical  definitions — at 
least  we  can  look  at  it,  as  Plato  did,  from  differ- 
ent points  of  view.  What  it  is  not  we  can  say 
^*5osbc  with  assurance.  It  is  not  pleasure,  since  pleas- 
ures may  be  relatively  either  good  or  bad. 
Neither  is  it  knowledge,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of 
the  word,  since  those  finer  wits  who  would  so  de- 
fine it  are  obliged  in  the  end  to  say  "knowledge 
of  the  Good."  How,  then,  shall  we  approach  it 
positively? 

When  we  see  the  supreme  Idea,  or  seem  to  see 
it,  as  a  power  at  work  in  other  things  than  our- 
selves, in  the  material  world  first  of  all,  and  then 
in  the  characters  of  men  as  a  part  of  that  visible 
_  world,  we  call  it  Beauty.  And  so  we  have  the 
211c  ff  marvellous  account,  in'the  Symposium,  of  the  up- 
ward progression  of  the  soul  when,  drawn  by  the 
charm  of  a  fair  form,  she  passes  on  to  consider 
this  form  with  other  fair  forms,  and  from  these 
to  fair  actions,  and  from  these  to  fair  notions, 
and  out  of  these  to  that  one  notion  of  absolute 
beauty,  and  catches  glimpses  of  Beauty  at  last 
as  it  is  in  itself.  This,  be  it  observed,  is  not  the 
surrender  of  the  soul  to  the  allurements  of  gold 
and  rich  vestments  and  the  physical  bloom  of 
youth,  which  might  lead  us  in  a  direction  the 

7),  has  dealt  magisterially  with  the  subject  of  these  lec- 
tures and  of  an  esoteric  doctrine. 


DOCTRINE  OF  ffiEAS  201 

very  opposite  of  the  Good,  but  is,  as  it  were,  a 
rejection  of  these  attractions  while  in  the  act  of 
appreciating  them.  It  is  not,  as  in  the  case  of 
the  mere  aesthete,  a  submersion  of  the  soul  in 
the  flux  of  the  world  as  the  flux  appears  to  us 
stayed  and  informed  by  a  force  equivalent  to  the 
inner  check,  but  an  invigorating  sense  of  this 
force  as  so  manifesting  itself  in  the  world  and  as 
drawing  us  by  the  world,  and  from  the  world,  to 
itself.  And  he  who  thus  rests  his  eyes  upon  the 
divine  indwelling  force  of  beauty,  rather  than 
upon  its  scattered  and  inert  manifestations,  will 
feel  awakened  within  himself  a  kindred  impulse, 
not  of  passive  pleasure,  but  of  moral  energy, 
spurring  him  to  engender  true  deeds  of  virtue,  as 
an  immortal  being  raised  into  the  companionship 
of  God. 

With  that  last  word  we  see  how  easily  the  su- 
preme Idea  passes  into  the  field  of  religion.  The 
apex  of  our  aesthetic  experience  which  was  at- 
tained by  the  ascending  steps  of  generalization  is 
now  conversely  regarded  as  a  creative  energy 
reaching  down  into  the  world  and  imposing  upon 
its  fleeting  substance  the  forms  and  order  of  sta- 
bility. And  this  Cause  of  being,  as  contrasted 
with  the  not-being  of  chaos,  will  become  to  Plato, 
particularly  in  his  later  years,  when  in  the 
Timaeus  and  the  Laws  he  turns  from  the  vexa- 
tions of  metaphysical  inquiry  back  to  the  less  in- 
quisitive faith  of  youth,  simply  God;  not  the 


202  PLATONISM 

gods  of  the  popular  pantheon,  whose  story  is 
filled  with  the  evils  and  atrocities  of  human  law- 
lessness, but  the  God,  who  is  as  it  were  the  re- 
flection in  the  mirror  of  the  universe — it  may 
rather  be  the  original  and  no  reflection  at  all — 
of  that  daemonic  check  in  the  soul  which  is  the 
cause  of  truth  and  beauty. 

But  withal,  however  large  a  part  we  may  sup- 
pose the  supreme  Idea  to  play  in  our  aesthetic 
and  religious  Hfe,  it  was  still  more  important,  in 
Plato's  philosophy,  to  study  it  there  in  the  soul 
itself.  For  thus  alone  we  shall  not  infer  it  by 
metaphor  or  allegory,  but  know  it,  know  it  im- 
mediately in  its  pure  essence,  as  that  for  which 
all  other  things  are  desired  and  which  is  the  end 
of  all  desire — the  Good.  And  how  do  we  know 
that  which  surpasses  knowing?  The  answer  was 
given  by  Plato  in  the  argument  of  The  Republic; 
it  may  be  found  summarily  stated  in  an  early 
Christian  theologian  who  was  often  a  better 
Academician  than  were  the  Pagans  who  usurped 
the  name:  "Plato  himself  says  that  happiness 
(eudaimonia)  is  the  well-being  of  the  daemon, 
and  that  by  the  daemon  is  meant  the  governing 
element  of  our  soul,  and  that  the  most  perfect 
and  fullest  Good  is  this  happiness."^ 

®  Clemens  Alexandrinus,  Stromata,  II,  xxii,  181:  'Avtos 
Zk  6  IIAoTtov  T^v  tihatfiovCav  to  tv  tov  Sat/xova  ?X*"''  Sat/xova  8e 
\eye<r6ai  to  t^s  "A^XV?  ^fiSiv  ^ycfMoviKov,  rrjv  8e  tiSatfioviav  to 
TcActoTOTOv  ayadov  koI  vX-qpifrTaTov  Xeyu. 


DOCTRINE  OF  IDEAS  203 

In  this  consummation  of  Plato's  dialectic  we 
see  how  at  last  the  three  theses  that  wind  in  and 
out  of  his  Dialogues  are  brought  together  and 
indissolubly  united.  The  Good  is  the  spiritual 
affirmation  of  Socrates,  spoken  now  in  the  tested 
language  of  philosophy.  It  is  the  scepticism  of 
Socrates,  since  it  states  a  fact  that  cannot  be  de-  Republic  so8« 
fined  in  the  terms  of  the  understanding,  and  bids 
the  reason  submit  to  this  fact  as  to  a  master.  In 
its  double  aspect  it  is  the  solution  of  the  Socratic 
paradox,  since  with  the  soul's  own  feeling  of  hap- 
piness it  makes  moral  intuition  the  one  certain 
thing  above  peradventure,  thus  identifying  mo- 
rality and  knowledge,  while  as  the  source  of  what 
light  we  have  to  guide  us  in  the  practical  decis- 
ions of  this  world,  it  imparts  a  measure  of  truth 
to  our  judgments  and  the  power  of  judging  to 
the  mind,  thus  identifying  virtue  and  right  opin- 
ion. It  is  the  limit  of  self-consciousness,  given 
by  the  soul  to  the  imagination,  and  rendered  by 
the  imagination  back  to  the  soul  as  an  Idea, 
"more  beautiful  than  truth  or  knowledge." 


CHAPTER  VII 

SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY 

With  his  habitual  flexibility  Plato,  as  we  have 
seen,  used  the  term  "Idea"  both  for  the  rational- 
ized forms  of  things  in  time  and  space  and  for 
the  immediate  intuitions  of  the  soul.  The  latter 
are  the  field  of  ethical  dialectic,  or  true  philo- 
sophy, the  former  of  intellectual  dialectic,  or 
science;  and  the  failure  to  discriminate  resolute- 
ly between  these  two  fields  has  been  a  fruitful 
source  of  error  among  self-styled  Platonists 
from  the  beginning  down  to  the  present  day. 
The  confusion  is  in  some  measure  attributable  to 
the  fact  that  Plato  had  at  command  no  specific 
word  corresponding  to  our  conception  of  "sci- 
ence," but,  as  in  Latin,  so  in  Greek,  the  same 
general  expression  (scientia,  episteme)  had  to  do 
duty  for  all  kinds  of  knowledge.  The  chief  task 
of  the  commentator,  therefore,  may  sometimes 
seem  to  be  nothing  more  than  the  imposition  of 
a  rigid  terminology  on  the  freer  method  of  the 
Master.  The  process,  one  admits,  is  not  without 
its  dangers,  similar  to  those  that  attend  the 
hardening  of  religious  faith  into  formulated 
creeds;  but  the  risk  is  necessary,  in  the  one  case 

304 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  206 

as  in  the  other,  if  we  would  guard  ourselves 
against  the  heresies  that  seek  authority  under  the 
cover  of  a  great  name. 

In  the  introductory  books  of  The  Republic 
Plato  showed  that  a  State  is  rightly  governed 
when  there  is  a  proper  division  of  the  citizens  and 
each  class  performs  its  own  duties,  one  class 
guiding,  another  defending,  another  producing. 
In  like  manner  an  individual  man  is  in  a  healthy 
condition  when  his  various  faculties  function  nor- 
mally. Both  the  State  and  the  man,  when  so 
functioning,  possess  the  several  virtues  of  wis- 
dom, courage,  and  temperance,  belonging  re- 
spectively to  the  separate  classes  and  faculties. 
In  both,  justice  is  regarded  as  the  active  prin- 
ciple which,  by  its  power  of  temporary  or  per- 
manent veto,  holds  each  class  or  faculty  to  the 
performance  of  its  particular  duty;  it  is  the  dy- 
namic centre  of  morahty  manifesting  itself  at 
the  periphery  in  the  specific  virtues.  Now  this 
healthy  condition  can  be  assured  only  by  that 
complete  self-knowledge  which  will  place  philo- 
sophy in  command  of  the  soul  and  the  philo- 
sopher at  the  head  of  the  State.  What,  then,  is 
the  procedure  by  which  we  shall  attain  to  this 
knowledge?  Manifestly  it  is  by  means  of  a 
course  of  education  directed  not  so  much  to  the  Republic  sisc 
acquisition  of  crude  information  ( Plato  accepted 
the  old  Greek  saying  that  "much-learning  does 
not  educate  the  mind")  as  to  the  end  of  turning 


206  PLATONISM 

the  whole  soul  from  the  pursuit  of  shadows  to  the 
contemplation  of  the  one  light  of  truth. 
509d  s  It  is  at  this  point,  before  entering  upon  the 
intellectual  discipline  necessary  for  the  philo- 
sopher, that  Plato  introduces  the  famous  image 
of  the  divided  line,  the  nature  of  which  can  be 
best  displayed  in  a  diagram,  thus: 

Opinion  Knowledge 

f ^ \  f ^ ^ 

Conjecture         I  Belief  I  Understanding  I  Pure  reason, 

I  I  I  Knowledge 

Images,  I  Objects,        I     Mathematical    I  Ethical 

Reflections, etc.  |  Animals,  etc.  |    forms  |  experiences 

At  a  first  glance  the  main  bifurcation  here  is 
that  between  the  two  great  fields  covered  the  one 
by  opinion,  with  its  two  grades  of  conjecture  and 
belief,  and  the  other  by  knowledge,  with  its  two 
corresponding  grades;  and  this,  indeed,  is  a 
dichotomy  that  rims  all  through  Plato's  works — 
on  the  one  side  the  uncertain  mutability  of  the 
phenomenal  world  and  of  our  relation  to  it,  on  the 
other  side  the  certain  stability  of  the  intelligible 
world.  Yet,  as  we  follow  the  application  of  his 
line  to  the  actual  system  of  education,  we  discover 
that  the  emphasis  of  division  undergoes  signifi- 
cant changes.  To  begin  with,  the  first  of  the  four 
members,  that  of  images  and  conjecture,  is  quiet- 
ly dropped  out  of  consideration,  though,  for  other 
purposes,  it  is  taken  up  again  in  the  last  book  of 
The  Republic.    This  leaves  us  with  a  threefold 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  207 

division  of  material  objects,  mathematical  forms, 
and  ethical  experiences,  which,  it  will  be  seen  at 
a  glance,  correspond  to  the  three  classes  of  Plato's 
Ideas.  Now,  as  Plato  is  dealing  here  with  edu- 
cation as  a  discipline  in  the  knowledge  of  Ideas, 
we  should  expect  this  triple  classification  to  re- 
divide  so  as  to  indicate  two  main  groups,  embrac- 
ing on  one  side  those  generalizations  from  par- 
ticulars and  those  mathematical  forms  which  to- 
gether are  the  subject  matter  of  science,  and  on 
the  other  side  those  intuitions  which  belong  to 
the  true  dialectic.  And  such  is  the  case;  Plato's 
line  does  ultimately  conform  to  this  fundamental 
dualism  of  his  philosophy,  although  the  fact  is 
obscured  somewhat  by  the  peculiar  bent  of  his 
mind. 

In  his  conception  of  science,  contrariwise  in 
this  to  his  ethical  procedure,  Plato  shows  every- 
where a  strong  bias  towards  the  deductive  meth- 
od; and  as  a  result  his  comparative  contempt  for 
pure  observation  and  for  generalization  by  in- 
duction led  him  to  neglect  the  experimental  and 
biological  bases  which  Aristotle  did  so  much  to 
estabhsh.  Even  the  mania,  as  it  might  almost  be 
called,  for  classification  which  infests  some  of  his 
later  Dialogues — notably  the  Sophist  and  the 
Politicus — does  not  work  itself  out  by  an  induc- 
tive ascent  from  the  less  inclusive  to  the  more  in- 
clusive, but  proceeds  downward  by  a  series  of 
rather  mechanical  dichotomies.    It  foUows  that 


208  PLATONISM 

the  parts  of  science  admitted  into  his  educational 
curriculum  are  preponderantly  the  deductive 
branches  of  mathematics,  beginning  with  arith- 
metic and  passing  on  through  plane  and  solid 
geometry  to  astronomy  and  musical  harmony. 
Though  the  Ideas  corresponding  to  natural  gen- 
erUj  which  are  treated  in  the  inductive  sciences, 
may  not  be  excluded  absolutely  from  such  a 
scheme,  they  will  sink  to  a  very  subordinate 
position. 

In  determining  the  place  of  astronomy  and 
music — ^more  particularly  the  former — in  such  a 
curriculum,  Plato  raises  the  question  whether  the 
method  of  study  then  in  vogue  should  not  be 
changed  for  one  better  suited  to  the  purpose  of 
^Ins"  "'*^'  philosophical  training,  and  to  this  end  he  em- 
phasizes the  difference  between  the  mere  observa- 
tion of  phenomena  and  the  pursuit  of  scientific, 
or  mathematical,  law.  All  these  devious  lights 
which  we  behold  moving  in  the  sky  are  indeed  the 
fairest  and  most  orderly  of  visible  objects,  yet 
are  far  from  those  true  motions  and  those  exact 
forms  apprehensible  by  the  understanding  alone 
and  not  by  the  eyes.  They  are  to  be  used  as 
rough  diagrams  written  out  for  us  in  the  heavens 
and  serviceable  to  the  reason,  but  the  geometer, 
though  acknowledging  their  excellence  as  works 
of  handicraft,  would  deem  it  absurd  to  study 
them  seriously  as  if  in  them  could  be  found  the 
absolute  laws  of  proportion.    Now,  some  part  of 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  209 

this  contempt  for  the  slower  procedure  of  obser- 
vational science  must  be  laid,  as  we  have  said,  to 
Plato's  ineradicable  distrust  for  things  as  they 
are  and  to  the  deductive  bias  of  his  mind ;  but  in 
a  measure  also  it  can  be  ascribed  to  the  imperfec- 
tion of  the  available  means  of  observation.  The 
astronomer  of  that  day  possessed  no  mechanical 
instrument  by  which  the  motions  of  the  celestial 
bodies  could  be  accurately  observed  and  so  made 
the  basis  of  mathematical  formulae.  Hence  the 
scientific  astronomer  (in  Plato's  sense  of  the 
word)  would  be  obhged  to  work  upon  an  intel- 
lectualized  sphere,  so  to  speak,  of  which  the  visi- 
ble scroll  of  the  heavens  is  a  clumsy  and  ever- 
changing  imitation.  In  this  notion  of  a  mathe- 
matical system  which  could  be  guessed  at  from 
what  was  actually  observed,  Plato  was  looking 
beyond  his  age  to  the  time  when  the  real  science 
of  astronomy  was  possible;  but  we  may  suppose 
also  that,  if  he  were  living  today,  he  would  still 
hold  it  a  form  of  illusion  to  believe  that  the  rela- 
tions of  material  phenomena  of  any  sort  are  such 
as  can  be  contained  in  a  complete  equation.  He 
would  maintain  that  there  is  no  perfect  corre- 
spondence but  only  an  approximation  between 
the  facts  of  observation  and  the  generalized  laws 
which  belong  rather  to  the  apparatus  of  our  own 
intelligence ;  and  in  this,  I  take  it,  he  would  be  in 
accord  with  the  most  recent  trend  of  scientific 
theory. 


210  PLATONISM 

Observational  astronomy  Plato,  therefore, 
relegated  to  a  place  among  the  arts,  and  rejected 
its  pretensions  to  the  name  of  science.  The 
higher  education  of  the  philosopher  was  not  con- 
cerned with  those  Ideas  which  correspond  to  gen- 
eralizations from  particular  objects  such  as  men 
or  tables,  or  from  the  visible  motions  of  phenom- 
ena, even  the  majestic  phenomena  of  the  heavens, 
but  with  those  Ideas  of  form  and  quantity  and 
time  which  belong  to  the  pure  understanding ;  not 
with  the  stars  and  their  measured  orbits,  but  with 
the  absolute  circles  and  ellipses  of  an  immaterial 
world.  Yet  this  ideal  science,  all  science  indeed, 
is  only  a  part  of  the  propaedeutic  to  the  veritable 
interest  of  the  philosopher;  we  reach  at  last  the 
essential  division  in  Plato's  scheme.  To  compre- 
hend this  bifurcation  we  must  recur  again  to  the 
fourfold  line  in  which  the  progress  of  education 
was  figured,  and  must  take  note  of  a  curious  am- 
biguity in  its  terminology. 

Under  the  higher  division  of  "knowledge,"  as 
distinguished  from  "opinion,"  are  embraced  two 
fields:  one  of  mathematical  forms  and  the  cor- 
responding faculty,  or  understanding;  the  other 
of  ethical  experiences  and  the  faculty  corre- 
sponding to  these,  which,  among  its  various  ap- 
pellations, is  called  by  precisely  the  same  term, 
"knowledge,"  as  that  under  which  both  of  these 
spheres  are  subsumed.  That  is  to  say,  we  are 
brought  once  more  face  to  face  with  the  trouble- 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  211 

some  fact  that  Plato  recognized  two  kinds  of 
knowledge  (entirely  apart  from  the  realm  of 
opinion),  and  that  in  some  passages  he  treats 
these  as  if  identical,  while  in  other  passages  the 
central  thesis  of  his  philosophy  seems  to  depend 
on  maintaining  a  distinction  between  them. 

Certainly  this  distinction  is  made  with  formal 
precision,  and  the  relative  places  of  science  and 
dialectic  are  settled  without  ambiguity,  in  the 
closing  paragraphs  of  the  sixth  book.  Students  ^^uS'fr 
of  arithmetic  and  geometry,  it  is  there  said,  as- 
sume the  odd  and  even  forms,  the  three  kinds  of 
triangles,  and  the  like  as  universally  admitted 
hypotheses  which  need  no  proof,  and  from  these 
proceed  to  demonstrate  whatever  problem  they 
have  in  view.  They  use,  indeed,  visible  figures  in 
these  demonstrations,  but  in  reality  their  concern 
is  with  the  absolute  square,  for  instance,  or  the 
absolute  diagonal,  which  exist  in  the  understand- 
ing alone  and  of  which  the  diagrams  drawn  by 
them  are  only  symbols.  This  procedure  belongs 
to  the  intelligible  sphere  of  knowledge,  although 
in  it  the  soul  cannot  rise  to  first  principles  but  is 
obliged  to  cling  to  hypotheses,  employing  for  this 
purpose  the  intellectualized  figures  of  those  ma- 
terial objects  of  which  the  shadowy  reflections  (in 
the  lowest  of  the  four  divisions)  are  the  field  of 
conjecture.  Such  is  the  sphere  of  geometry  and 
the  other  mathematical  sciences.  In  contrast 
with  this  is  the  higher  sphere  of  the  intelligible 


212  PLATONISM 

(the  highest  of  the  four  divisions) .  Here,  reason 
starts  indeed  with  hypotheses,  as  it  does  in  sci- 
ence, but  uses  them  merely  as  a  point  of  de- 
parture for  its  ascent  into  a  world  that  is  above 
hypothesis,  and  so  mounting  climbs  to  the  first 
principle  of  all  (the  Good).  This  is  the  world 
of  knowledge  and  true  being  contemplated  by 
dialectic  (that  is,  ethical  dialectic,  as  shown  in 
Plato's  practical  illustrations,  though  he  does  not 
here  so  qualify  it),  a  clearer  and  purer  world 
than  that  of  the  sciences  so-called.  The  activity 
of  the  mind  concerned  with  geometry  and  its 
cognates  is  properly  termed  understanding  and 
not  reason  (the  higher  reason,  or  intuition),  as 
falling  between  opinion  and  reason.^ 

I  do  not  see  how  it  could  be  averred  in  plainer 
language  that  the  essential  division  of  the  line 
marks  off  dialectic  alone  on  the  one  side,  and  on 
the  other  side  the  three  fields  of  which  mathe- 
matics and  its  abstractions  are  the  highest.  And 
the  value  of  science,  as  of  the  departments  below 
it,  is  not  in  itself,  but  in  its  use  as  a  gymnasium, 
or  training  place,  for  the  mind  that  is  preparing 
for  the  philosophic  life.  Each  study,  beginning 
with  the  common  arts,  is  an  illustration,  so  to 
speak,  of  that  above  it;  practice  of  the  lower 
faculty  is  a  discipline  for  the  exercise  of  the 

^  Republic  51  Id:    Auxvoiav  8«  KaXeiv  fioi  SoKeU  rrjv  rStv  yea>- 

fl€TpiKWV    T€  Kal    T^V  TcJjV    TOlOVT(OV  €$IV  oW'  OV  VOVV,  WS  ftCTO^V  Ti 

B6$f]i  Tc  Koi  vov  rrjV  Btdvoiav  ovaav. 


535b 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  213 

higher,  while  the  potential  presence  of  the  higher 
demonstrates  itself  in  the  activity  of  the  lower. 
There  is  nothing  of  the  "ivory  tower"  in  this  sys- 
tem, no  place  for  the  dreamer  in  wisdom  or  for 
the  antinomian  hypocrite;  and  Plato  is  as  thor- 
oughly convinced  as  St.  James  that  faith  and  ^^^l%t  po4t 
works  cannot  be  disjoined.  How  otherwise  could 
it  be  in  a  doctrine  wherein  the  assurance  of  truth 
takes  the  form  of  happiness  attending  an  active 
and  unremitting  self-government?  And  so,  how- 
ever sharply  Plato's  philosophy  in  its  logical  as- 
pect falls  into  an  absolute  dualism,  in  practice  it 
is  always  presented  as  a  slow  ascent  of  the  soul 
by  the  steps  of  physical  and  mental  and  moral 
discipline. 

If,  in  the  course  of  education  just  described, 
the  mathematical  sciences  seem  to  have  usurped 
an  undue  prominence,  our  judgment  of  the  fact 
must  take  various  considerations  into  account. 
In  the  first  place  it  must  be  remembered  that  the 
training  of  the  body  and  the  ordinary  instruction 
in  the  arts  had  already  been  discussed  by  Plato 
at  great  length  in  earlier  books  of  The  Republic. 
And,  secondly,  mathematical  studies  were  the 
only  ones  sufficiently  advanced  in  Greece  to  offer 
the  sort  of  discipline  obtained  in  our  graduate 
schools  today  in  many  fields  of  history  and  lin- 
guistic beyond  the  preparatory  and  general 
education  of  the  college.  But  even  if  this  were 
not  the  case,  it  is  probable  that  Plato  would  have 


214  PLATONISM 

regarded  studies  of  which  geometry  is  the  type 
as  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  immediate  prepara- 
tion for  the  life  in  philosophy  towards  which  all 
serious  education  was  directed.  For  mathe- 
matics, like  dialectic,  deals  with  imchanging  real- 
ities, though  in  a  different  sphere  of  the  ideal 
world;  and  by  our  experience  with  the  fixed 
hypothetical  abstractions  of  mathematics  he 
would  hold  that  we  are  helped  to  rise  above  a  du- 
bious recognition  of  the  shifting  standards  of 
custom  and  tradition  into  loyalty  to  the  eternal 
veracity  of  ethical  Ideas. 

Furthermore,  and  this,  perhaps,  is  the  real  key 
to  Plato's  exaggerated  interest  in  the  science  of 
s25d  number,  mathematics  rests  finally  on  the  basis 
of  the  one  and  the  many,  abstracting  from  the 
perception  of  the  divisible  one  and  the  unifiable 
many  the  conception  of  an  absolute  One  and  an 
absolute  Many.  And  this  distinction  between 
unity  and  multiplicity,  the  uniform  and  the  va- 
rious, the  unchanging  and  the  changing,  the  self- 
complete  and  the  progressive,  at  once  abstract 
and  corresponding  to  actual  experience,  is  the 
only  resource  at  our  command  to  express  in  lan- 
guage of  the  understanding  the  ultimate  dualism 
(as  we  thus  call  it)  of  consciousness  upon  which 
morality  is  founded.  With  this  instrument  at  his 
disposal,  the  dialectical  philosopher  is  able  to 
give  an  account  of  himself,  and  to  ward  off  de- 
lusive notions  and  the  attacks  of  false  logic.    He 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  216 

not  only  possesses  the  faith  of  intuition,  but  is 
armed  with  the  full  panoply  of  discursive  reason. 
In  Socrates  Plato  saw  the  perfect  model  of  such 
a  dialectical  gladiator. 

The  Dialogue  in  which  Plato  develops  his  sci- 
entific theories  in  connection  with  a  vision  of  the 
universe  as  a  whole  is  the  Timaeus.  I  suspect 
that  most  students  who  approach  this  strange 
piece  of  writing  will  undergo  an  experience  some- 
what as  follows.  A  first  reading  is  likely  to  leave 
them  merely  confused  and  mystified.  A  second 
reading  will  lead  them  to  feel  that  part  of  the 
Dialogue,  the  religious  speculation,  contains  a 
sublime  allegory,  while  another  part,  the  scientific 
speculation,  still  repels  them  as  futile  and  weari- 
some. A  third  reading  may  bring  the  conviction 
that  even  this  scientific  speculation,  though  in  de- 
tail often  resting  on  hasty  assumptions  and  miss- 
ing the  inductive  method  of  experiment,  is  yet  as 
a  whole  one  of  the  very  great  achievements  of  the 
human  brain.  Certainly  the  attempt  to  reduce 
the  material  universe  to  a  purely  geometrical  and 
mechanical  system  has  allured  thinking  men  from 
that  day  to  this,  with,  it  must  be  added,  utterly 
different  results  according  as  they  have  been  true 
or  not  to  the  spirit  in  which  Plato  himself  con- 
ceived the  function  of  science. 

Whatever  may  be  doubtful  in  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Timaeus,  one  thing  ought  to  be  be- 
yond question:  the  whole  argument  is  founded 


216  PLATONISM 

on  a  radical  dualism.  To  say,  with  the  English 
editor,  that  here  we  find  "Platonism  as  a  com- 
plete and  coherent  scheme  of  monistic  idealism,"^ 
is  to  suffer  the  error,  only  too  common  at  the 
present  day,  of  forcing  into  Plato's  words  a  meta- 
physic  which  is  quite  contrary  to  their  plain 
meaning.    The  true  thesis  is  stated  unequivocally 

27b  in  the  opening  sentences  of  the  argument:  "In 
the  first  place,  then,  in  my  opinion,  we  must  dis- 
tinguish these  two  things:  What  is  that  which 
always  is  and  has  no  becoming,  and  what  is  that 
which,  always  becoming,  never  is?  The  one,  be- 
ing always  the  same,  we  comprehend  by  thought 
with  reason;  the  other,  becoming  and  perishing, 
never  really  being,  we  guess  at  by  opinion  with 
unreasoning  perception."  And  this  distinction 
is  repeated  at  the  opening  of  the  second  main  di- 

47«  vision  of  the  argument:  "What  we  have  said 
hitherto,  with  slight  exceptions,  was  concerned 
with  exhibiting  the  things  created  through  mind, 
or  reason ;  but  we  must  now  add  to  our  exposition 

siD  the  things  that  become  out  of  necessity.  ...  If 
reason  and  true  opinion  are  two  things  different 
in  kind,  then  do  the  unchangeable  Ideas  surely 
exist  as  objects  of  reason  alone,  not  perceptible 
by  our  senses;  but  if,  as  some  hold,  true  opinion 
differs  in  nothing  from  reason,  then  all  that  we 
perceive  by  our  bodily  organs  must  be  regarded 
as  having  the  most  real  existence." 

^  Archer-Hind,  Introduction,  p.  2, 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  217 

That  is  to  say,  in  both  the  grand  divisions  of 
the  argument  the  starting-point  is  the  immediate 
consciousness  of  that  duahsm  within  the  soul  it- 
self which,  intellectually,  appears  as  knowledge 
and  opinion;  and  from  this  the  assumption  is 
made  that  the  world  of  which  we  are  members 
must  conform  in  some  way  to  this  double  opera- 
tion of  consciousness.  If  we  have  reason,  a  cer- 
tainty of  knowledge,  there  must  exist  in  the  imi- 
verse  at  large  a  sphere  of  changeless,  eternal  ob- 
jects which  can  thus  be  known,  the  Ideas,  and 
these  must  be  absolutely  different  in  kind  from 
the  objects  of  physical  perception  which  have  the 
changing,  ephemeral  nature  of  opinion.  The  cos- 
mogony of  the  Timaeus  will  be  a  marvellously 
unrolling  picture  of  the  relation  and  interaction 
between  these  two  elements,  a  supreme  effort  of 
the  imagination  working  out  the  story  of  crea- 
tion, not  in  capricious  license,  but  under  the  con- 
trol at  each  step  of  the  law  of  our  own  inner  be- 
ing— at  least  such  ought  to  be  the  procedure, 
and  such  the  procedure  is  when  Plato  remains 
true  to  his  own  law  of  scepticism. 

At  the  centre  of  this  story  lies  the  great  pas- 
sage, already  quoted  as  one  of  the  mottoes  of  this 
book,  which,  more  clearly  perhaps  than  any  other 
words  in  Plato,  states  the  purpose  and  character 
of  his  philosophical  investigation:  "Wherefore  68b 
we  must  discriminate  between  two  kinds  of  cause, 
the  one  of  necessity,  the  other  divine:  and  the 


218  PLATONISM 

divine  cause  we  must  seek  in  all  things,  to  the 
end  that  we  may  possess  a  happy  life  so  far  as 
our  nature  permits;  and  the  necessary  cause  for 
the  sake  of  the  divine,  reflecting  that  otherwise 
we  cannot  apprehend  by  themselves  those  truths 
which  are  the  object  of  our  serious  study,  nor 
grasp  them  or  in  any  other  way  partake  of  them." 
Such  is  the  double  aspect  of  the  world,  a  divine 
element  and  a  substratum  of  brute  necessity,  as 
reflected  in  the  dualism  of  our  own  souls ;  and  the 
tale  of  creation  is  divided  accordingly  into  two 
sections,  as  the  work  is  considered  to  proceed 
from  above  downwards  or  from  below  upwards. 
In  the  first  account,  taken  in  briefest  outline, 
we  are  told  how  God  creates  the  actual  world  as 
a  living  animal  in  likeness  of  the  ideal  world.  As 
to  the  manner  in  which  Plato  conceives  this  ideal 
model  of  which  our  universe  is  the  imperfect,  but 
the  best  possible,  imitation,  there  is  no  clear  state- 
ment ;  the  conception  is  left  in  the  same  mythical 
penumbra  that  always  surrounds  his  theory  of 
Ideas.  Are  these  Ideas,  we  ask,  the  thoughts  of 
God,  or  are  they  eternal  laws,  or  substantial  enti- 
ties of  some  sort  existing  outside  of  himself;  and 
there  is  no  definite  reply.  The  like  insoluble 
question,  whether  holiness  and  righteousness  are 
determined  by  God's  will  or  themselves  determine 
iod  it,  was  raised  in  the  EuthypTiro,  as  it  has  been 
raised  since  by  Christian  theologians  and  left  un- 
answered.    In  a  general  way  we  may  say  this: 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  219 

that  the  conception  of  Ideas  runs  parallel  in 
Plato's  mind  with  the  mythology  of  a  vaguely 
personal  deity ;  when  the  mere  immanence  of  the 
divine  in  the  phenomenal  world,  or  the  similarity 
of  the  phenomenal  to  the  divine,  is  dominant  in 
his  thought,  then  the  divine  floats  before  his  vis- 
ion as  the  Ideal,  and  he  speaks  as  a  philosopher; 
but  when  the  divine  is  considered  rather  as  an 
energy  or  cause  working  upon  brute  material  and 
moulding  it  as  a  man  shapes  an  image  to  his  will, 
then  he  is  wont  to  speak  in  theological  language 
of  God,  the  creator  and  upholder  and  judge. 

Having  created  this  world-soul  and  its  vehicle, 
God  then  mixes  what  remains  of  the  soul-stuff, 
distributes  it  to  the  stars  (not  as  planetary  souls, 
but  as  material  for  further  u^e),  and  implants 
in  it  knowledge  of  its  destiny  and  duty.  There- 
upon he  rests,  and  calls  upon  the  lesser  gods  to 
fashion  the  various  creatures  in  their  kinds,  leav- 
ing this  task  to  his  lieutenants  lest  any  one 
should  impute  to  the  hand  of  the  supreme  Demi- 
urge the  imperfections  that  must  inhere  in  indi- 
vidual things.  First  his  delegates  compose  the 
soul  of  man,  of  three  parts:  reason,  which  is 
placed  in  the  brain  and  so  separated  from  the 
other  two  faculties  and  from  the  influence  of  the 
grosser  body;  the  thymos  (the  seat  of  the  per- 
sonal emotions),  which  goes  to  the  breast,  and  is 
generally  an  assistant  of  reason  in  governing  the 
third  faculty;  and  this  third  faculty,  the  concu- 


220  PLATONISM 

piscent  element,  situated  in  the  abdomen.  As  in 
The  Republic,  the  significant  division  is  between 
reason,  which  is  divine  and  immortal,  and  the 
emotional  and  concupiscent  members  of  the  soul, 
which  are  mortal  and  often  indistinguishable 
from  the  body. 

The  second  part  of  the  Dialogue  takes  up  the 
story  of  creation  from  the  material  side.  The 
substratum  of  the  world,  upon  which  the  Demi- 
urge and  his  delegates  work,  is  described  as  the 
expansion  of  space,  or  the  irregular  and  unrest- 
ing flux,  which  is  brought  into  comparative  order 
by  the  imposition  of  limits  and  geometric  forms. 
We  have  thus  the  fundamental  dualism  falling 
into  a  counterpart  of  the  fourfold  scheme  of  the 
Philehus:  at  the  one  extreme  is  the  "cause,"  or 
God,  at  the  other  extreme  the  "infinite"  {apei- 
ron,  more  properly  the  limitlessness  of  chaos  than 
our  notion  of  infinity) ;  and  between  them  the  ir- 
rational relation  of  these  two  extremes,  expressed 
as  the  "limit,"  or  mathematical  form,  and  the 
"limited,"  or  formal  world.  But  for  the  infinite 
of  the  Philehus  Plato  substitutes  in  the  Timaeus 
a  term  of  wider  and  deeper  significance.  This 
substratum  of  the  limitless  flux  is  now  called  by 
the  name  "necessity"  (ananke)y  which  points  at 
once  to  the  double  aspect  of  creation  that  was  al- 
ways more  or  less  clearly  present  to  Plato's  mind. 
So  important,  in  fact,  is  the  implication  of  this 
word,  that  on  its  interpretation  may  depend  one's 
right  to  be  classed  as  a  true  Platonist. 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  221 

As  in  the  philosophical  mythology  Goodness  is 
placed  at  the  apex  of  the  Ideas,  whence  its  in- 
fluence reached  down  the  ladder  of  life,  so  in  the 
theological  view  of  creation  Goodness  is  the  mo- 
tive of  God's  action  and  the  end  of  being.  "He 
was  good,"  says  Timaeus  at  the  beginning  of  his  ^^ 
tale,  "and  in  the  good  there  never  can  be  envy  of 
aught.  And  being  free  from  this  quality,  he  de- 
sired all  things  to  be  as  like  to  himself  as  possi- 
ble. This  is  that  sovereign  principle  of  creatioij 
and  of  the  universe  which  we  most  certainly  shall 
be  right  in  accepting  from  wise  men.  For  God, 
in  his  desire  that  all  things  should  be  good  and 
that,  so  far  as  possible,  there  should  be  nothing 
evil,  took  the  visible  material  as  it  came  to  him, 
lying  not  in  a  state  of  rest  but  moving  without 
harmony  or  measure;  and  out  of  disorder  he 
brought  it  into  order,  thinking  such  a  state  alto- 
gether better  than  the  other."  And  so,  when  the 
act  of  creation  is  completed,  the  world  is  a  place 
of  forms  and  motions  ordered  to  the  end  of  good- 
ness, in  so  far  as  is  permitted  by  natural  neces- 
sity consenting  and  yielding  to  the  persuasion  of 
reason. 

In  the  use  of  this  word  "necessity"  we  see  how 
the  ethical  basis  of  Plato's  philosophy  becomes 
in  his  cosmogony  teleological.  Here,  as  always, 
his  point  of  departure  is  the  consciousness  of  our 
moral  being,  and  if  there  may  seem  to  be  some 
taint  of  the  pathetic  fallacy  in  such  a  reading  of 


222  PLATONISM 

human  motive  into  nature,  it  is  fair  to  remember 
that  any  comprehensible  theory  of  the  cause  of 
things  must  incur  the  same  condemnation.  The 
modern  conception  of  natural  law,  though  ex- 
pressed in  the  most  strictly  scientific  terms,  will 
in  the  end  be  found  to  depend  on  an  imphcit 
trust  in  the  submission  of  nature  to  reason  and 
rightness.  The  chief  difference  is  that  the  mod- 
em man  of  science,  in  formulating  his  general 
hypotheses,  is  likely  to  be  less  aware  of  his  men- 
tal processes  and  more  subject  to  naive  illusions 
than  was  Plato. 

But  if  necessity  has  this  teleological  aspect,  it 
has  also  another  aspect  in  which  formal  reason 
rather  than  purpose  is  pre-eminent.  Looked  at 
in  one  way  (which  is  the  essentially  Platonic 
way)  the  theory  of  a  divine  cause  and  necessity 
exhibits  even  the  material  world  as  the  field  of 
ethical  Ideas ;  from  another  point  of  view  it  seems 
for  the  moment  to  leave  these  in  obsciu'ity,  and 
shows  only  the  rational  Ideas  of  form  and  num- 
ber. Then  it  may  be  that  the  immortal  soul  it- 
self, whether  animating  the  universe  as  a  whole 
or  the  individual  creatures  within  the  universe, 
is  described,  in  the  language  of  a  geometrician,  as 
possessing  the  faculty  of  reason  and  self-govern- 
ment because  its  secret  motions  follow  the  laws 
of  mathematical  proportion,  and,  a  fortiori,  the 
material  world  is  conceived  as  a  rational  system 
because  of  the  imposition  of  these  same  laws  upon 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  22S 

the  chaos  of  necessity.  We  are  in  the  reahn  of 
physical  science. 

In  accordance  with  the  popular  notions  of  the 
day  Plato  divided  matter  into  the  four  elements ; 
but  these  were  rather  variations  of  one  aborigi- 
nal substance  in  its  fiery,  gaseous,  liquid,  and 
sohdified  states  than  separate  and  permanent 
substances.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  follow  his 
elaborate  account  of  the  production  of  these  ele- 
ments and  of  their  combinations  and  mutations. 
In  brief,  Plato  traces  geometric  forms  back  to 
their  origin,  and  finds  that  the  simplest  figures 
are  the  scalene  and  the  isosceles  triangle.  By 
combinations  of  the  former  he  constructs  the 
equilateral  triangle,  and  from  this  the  three  regu- 
lar sohds — the  pyramid,  the  octohedron,  and  the 
icosahedron.  Out  of  the  isosceles  triangle  he 
constructs  the  square,  and  from  this  the  cube. 
By  the  imposition  of  these  four  tridimensional 
figures  on  the  formless  substratum  he  creates  re- 
spectively his  four  elements — fire,  air,  water, 
earth.  The  actual  phenomena  perceived  by  us, 
as  well  as  the  organs  of  perception,  result  from 
the  adhesions,  transmutations,  and  interactions  of 
these  elements  caused  by  the  unresting  impulse 
which  they  bring  with  them  out  of  the  aboriginal 
flux  of  necessity. 

Many  of  the  details  of  Plato's  system  display 
the  faults  of  a  mind  too  easily  satisfied  with  a 
priori  reasoning,  yet  in  its  main  outlines  it  is  one 


224  PLATONISM 

of  the  most  grandiose  and  fruitful  of  human  in- 
ventions. The  substance  of  the  world  as  he  saw 
it  was  intrinsically  that  to  which  the  chemist  and 
physicist  of  today  are  looking — a  field  Of  energy 
the  differentiations  of  which  are  expressed  in  nu- 
merical formulae,  or,  in  other  words,  a  combina- 
tion of  motion  and  form.  The  whole  reach  of 
manifest  existence,  from  the  obscure  actions  of 
the  atom  to  the  uttermost  sweep  of  the  revolving 
spheres  of  the  heavens,  falls  into  a  vast  mathe- 
matical equation.  Much  of  the  inspiration  of 
this  theory  came  to  Plato,  no  doubt,  from  Pytha- 
gorean and  other  sources,  but  what  to  his  prede- 
cessors had  been  a  vague  dream  he  saw  as  a  co- 
ordinate and  rational  system.  So  far  as  the 
mathematical  interpretation  of  the  material  uni- 
verse can  be  attributed  to  the  invention  of  one 
human  brain,  the  honour  of  the  achievement  be- 
longs to  Plato. 

It  is  not  strange  that  the  Timaeus  should  have 
been  one  of  the  most  influential  of  Plato's  works. 
Through  the  Middle  Ages  the  role  of  the  Demi- 
urge harmonized  sufficiently  with  the  Hebrew 
Jehovah  to  shape  the  Christian  conceptions  of 
creation,  while  the  Ideas  as  models  of  the  visible 
world  could  be  accepted  as  the  eternal  thoughts 
of  God,  thus  bringing  philosophy  and  theology 
into  a  peaceful  imion.  With  the  Renaissarice 
other  aspects  of  the  Dialogue  came  more  to  the 
front,  and  played  no  inconsiderable  part  in  that 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  226 

mathematical  revival  which,  side  by  side  with  the 
biological  and  inductive  principles  of  develop- 
ment, marked  the  great  awakening  of  science. 
But  it  must  be  admitted,  however  reluctantly, 
that,  so  far  as  the  influence  of  Plato  has  been  felt 
in  this  direction,  it  has  tended  to  foster  rather  an 
improper  subordination  of  philosophy  to  science 
than  a  furtherance  of  legitimate  scientific  dis- 
covery. And  for  this  degradation  of  philosophy, 
though  it  is  in  essence  the  very  contrary  of 
Platonism,  we  cannot  entirely  exonerate  Plato 
himself.  It  may  not  be  fair  to  blame  him  for  the 
common  failure  to  comprehend  what  has  been 
called  his  economy  of  method,  his  habit,  that  is, 
of  taking  for  granted  that  the  main  theses  of  his 
philosophy  will  be  kept  in  memory  by  his  reader 
and  need  not  be  constantly  repeated  when  some 
outlying  question  is  under  consideration.  Nor  is 
it  to  his  discredit  that  he  was  always  the  searcher 
after  truth,  winding  his  arguments  sinuously 
back  and  forth  in  such  a  way  that  one  not  natu- 
rally akin  to  him  in  spirit  may  easily  miss  the 
steady  tidal  setting  of  his  thought.  But  it  is  a 
different  matter  when  at  times  he  allows  himself 
to  be  so  far  carried  away  by  subordinate  inter- 
ests as  to  approach  something  like  treachery  to 
his  own  deeper  intuition.  In  particular  there  is 
abundant  evidence  in  the  Dialogues  and  else- 
where that  in  his  old  age  he  wandered  into  a 
mathematical  mysticism  for  which  enigmatic  is 


«26  PLATONISM 

a  mild  word.  The  numerical  proportion  on 
which  the  soul  of  the  world  is  constructed  in  the 
35a  ff  Timaeus,  the  calculation  of  the  great  year  of  ex- 
S4to  ff  istence  in  The  Republic,  to  take  the  examples 
that  have  maddened  innumerable  commentators, 
are  fantastic  and,  at  bottom,  meaningless.  It 
may  be  also  that  in  his  lectures  on  the  Good  he 
permitted  this  lust  of  science  to  usurp  a  place  in 
the  realm  of  ethical  dialectic  which  he  himself 
had  denied  to  it.  We  can  in  a  way  understand 
his  purpose  and  justify  his  procedure.  These 
mathematical  entities  to  which  he  reduced  moral 
values  were,  we  may  suppose,  not  actual  mmi- 
bers,  but  the  principles  of  number — if  such  a 
phrase  means  anything.  The  quantitative  Ideas 
of  unity  and  division  might  be  taken  as  symbols 
of  the  quahtative  Ideas  of  dialectic ;  and  for  this 
substitution  there  is  a  certain  intellectual  justi- 
fication, as  I  have  poiated  out,  so  long  as  the 
character  of  the  substitution  is  not  forgotten. 
But  such  a  procedure  is  at  least  perilous  in  itself, 
and  was  certainly  disastrous  in  its  consequences. 
It  was  almost  inevitable  that  his  followers,  lack- 
ing his  own  sure  intuition,  should  seize  on  this 
mathematical  symbohsm  and  apply  it  in  the 
crudest  fashion  to  the  expression  of  dialectical 
truths — ^how  crude  the  fashion  we  may  see  in  the 
spurious  continuation  of  the  Laws  entitled  Epi- 
nomis.  This  recrudescence  of  Pythagorean  spec- 
ulations must  have  begun  very  soon  after  Plato's 


SCIENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  227 

death.  At  least  we  know  that  Xenocrates,  who 
succeeded  Speusippus,  Plato's  nephew,  as  head 
of  the  Academy,  defined  the  world-soul  and  indi- 
vidual souls  as  self -moving  number.  Naturally 
the  critics  of  Platonism  laid  hold  of  this  mad- 
ness and  exaggerated  its  importance.  Aristotle' 
did  not  hesitate  to  ridicule  the  theory  of  Xeno- 
crates in  particular  as  the  most  absurd  ever 
broached  by  man. 

This  is  the  phase  of  Platonism  that,  despite  its 
early  critics,  has  been  cropping  up  in  modem 
times  ever  since  the  Renaissance.  It  would  not 
be  easy  to  say  how  far  these  unexpected  results 
may  be  traced  to  a  renewed  interest  in  Plato 
along  with  the  revival  of  science,  and  how  far 
they  are  attributable  to  the  natural  inclination  of 
the  human  mind  to  magnify  the  scope  of  its  own 
achievements.*  But  certainly  the  analogy  of  the 
geometrical  scheme  of  the  Timaeus  with  the 
mechanistic  hypotheses  of  Descartes  is  sufficient- 
ly close  to  suggest  at  least  an  unconscious  causal 
relation  between  the  two.  And  from  Descartes 
the  mischievous  confusion  comes  to  a  climax  in 
Spinoza,  who  undertakes  to  interpret  the  world 
by  an  argument  proceeding  from  axioms  to 
theorems  and  corollaries  after  the  rigorous  man- 
ner of  Euclid's  geometry.    From  such  a  system 

*  De  Anima,  I,  iv,  16. 

*  For  the  influence  of  Platonism  and  Neoplatonism  in  this 
respect,  see  Kurd  Lasswitz,  Getchichte  der  Atomittik  I, 
pp.  264-269. 


228  PLATONISM 

teleological  design  and  liberty  of  the  spirit  are 
absolutely  excluded.  If  the  universe  is  to  be  ex- 
plained entirely  on  mathematical  principles,  it 
must  be  purely  mechanical  in  its  structure,  with 
no  place  for  spontaneity  or  deliberate  purpose. 
The  Darwinian  law  of  evolution  by  natural  se- 
lection, in  which  biology  joined  hands  with  a 
mathematical  law  of  probability,  gave  new  sanc- 
tion to  the  inclusion  of  the  human  spirit  in  the 
grinding  cogs  of  a  huge  machine.  The  "block 
universe"  of  Huxley,  though  he  violently  repudi- 
ated Platonism,  is  in  reality  a  late  stage  of  the 
scientific  philosophy  that,  apparently,  was  im- 
ported into  the  Academy  by  Xenocrates.  And 
in  our  own  days  we  have  the  much-applauded  ef- 
forts of  Mr.  Bertrand  Russell  and  certain  of  the 
so-called  New  Realists  to  reduce  the  Platonic 
Ideas  to  mathematical  entities. 

It  is  easy,  as  I  have  said,  to  see  how  this  sub- 
jection of  philosophy  to  mathematics  may  be  as- 
sociated with  certain  unguarded  statements  of 
Plato  in  the  Timaeus  and  elsewhere,  but  it  rests, 
nevertheless,  on  a  total  misconception  of  his  real 
position.  The  relation  of  dialectic  to  science  is, 
in  fact,  precisely  the  same  in  the  Timaeus  as  in 
The  Republic.  The  two  realms  of  Ideas  at  their 
beginning  lie  close  together,  and  the  knowledge 
of  the  one  may  almost  coalesce  with  the  know- 
ledge of  the  other.  At  least  in  the  degree  of  cer- 
tainty attending  them  the  moral  generalizations 


SaENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  229 

from  our  conduct  may  seem  at  their  start  to  dif- 
fer little  from  the  mathematical  and  geometric 
abstractions  of  the  intellect;  but  the  progress 
from  the  two  classes  of  generalizations  is  in  dia- 
metrically opposite  directions.  In  the  case  of 
dialectic  we  proceed  from  hypothesis  to  the  un- 
hypothetical  facts  of  ethical  experience,  and  so, 
by  the  gradual  elimination  of  what  is  contingent, 
rise  to  the  immediate  consciousness  of  that  ele- 
ment of  the  soul  which  is  the  basis  of  our  moral 
nature,  and  to  the  imaginative  conception  of  God, 
or  the  Good,  as  the  primal  cause  of  order  and 
beauty  and  joy  in  the  world;  whereas  in  the  case 
of  science  we  proceed  by  continually  immersing 
the  Ideas  deeper  and  deeper  into  the  lawless  un- 
knowable flux  of  necessity.  As  we  pass  from  the 
pure  science  of  mathematics  to  the  more  mixed 
and  comphcated  fields  of  physics  and  chemistry 
and  biology,  our  laws  become  continually  less 
rigorous,  our  formulae  more  subject  to  exception 
and  reversal,  our  generalization  more  dependent 
on  the  accumulation  of  detailed  observation.  It 
is  for  this  reason  that  all  through  the  Timaeus 
we  find  Plato,  as  soon  as  he  leaves  the  abstrac- 
tions of  number  and  form,  employing  the  words 
"probable"  (eikos)y  "probably"  (eikot68)\  and 
the  measure  of  the  gap  between  scientific  conjec- 
ture and  dialectical  assurance  may  be  taken  by 
comparing  the  constant  and  unabashed  use  of 
such  phrases  in  the  Timaeus  with  Plato's  scorn 


«80  PLATONISM 

and  cpntempt  in  the  Phaedrus  and  elsewhere  for 
the  sophistical  substitution  of  probability  and 
flattery  for  the  unyielding  truth  in  questions  of 
civic  and  personal  morality.  To  ascribe  know- 
ledge and  certainty  to  physical  science  and  to 
deny  man's  inner  freedom  by  imprisoning  the 
spirit  in  a  huge  mechanism  of  fixed  and  calculable 
natural  law  is  to  invert  the  whole  order  of  the 
Platonic  philosophy. 

The  result  of  such  an  inversion  is  shown  strik- 
ingly in  the  different  connotations  of  the  word 
"necessity"  in  Plato  and  Marcus  Aurelius.  To 
the  former  necessity  meant  the  resistance  of  the 
meaningless  and  incomprehensible  flux  of  things, 
whether  in  nature  or  the  human  soul,  to  the  gov- 
ernment of  order  and  happiness ;  it  was  the  exact 
contrary  of  the  spirit,  which  is  shrined  in  liberty. 
To  the  imperial  Stoic  necessity  was  the  binding 
force  of  the  whole  world,  leaving  to  the  spirit  this 
poor  relic  of  freedom  alone,  that  it  might  form  its 
own  opinion  as  to  the  moral  character  of  the  uni- 
versal flux  of  which  it  was  itself  also  a  part,  and 
so  might  persist  in  praising  that  as  good  which  it 
felt  to  be  evil.  The  stoicism  of  a  Marcus  Aure- 
lius was  not  without  its  forcible  consolations,  but 
for  all  its  protestations  it  was  intrinsically  a  doc- 
trine of  sadness  and  of  spiritual  sterility ;  and  the 
modem  stoicism  of  science  is  gray  with  the  same 
disease.  More  than  that,  there  is  no  stable  foun- 
dation of  conduct  in  this  physical  necessity  taken 


SaENCE  AND  COSMOGONY  2S1 

as  a  substitute  for  spiritual  law.  In  the  end  men 
will  clamour  for  release  from  such  joyless  servi- 
tude ;  if  they  cannot  discover  the  way  of  freedom 
in  the  law  of  the  spirit,  they  will  throw  open  the 
gate  of  the  soul  to  the  throng  of  invading  de- 
sires, and  the  stoical  necessity  of  science,  save 
for  the  few  exceptional  minds,  will  remain  as  a 
theory,  while  in  practice  the  mass  of  mankind 
will  follow  a  rebellious  and  epicurean  individ- 
ualism. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


METAPHYSICS 


By  metaphysics  I  should  say  that,  here  and 
elsewhere,  I  mean  something  different  from  phil- 
osophy. The  latter  is  the  sincere  and  humble  en- 
deavour to  make  clear  and  precise  to  ourselves 
the  fundamental  facts  of  our  conscious  life,  and 
47a  than  philosophy,  as  Plato  says  in  the  Timaeus, 
no  greater  good  has  come  nor  ever  will  come  to 
mortal  men  as  a  gift  from  the  gods.  Its  method 
and  its  truth  are  summed  up  in  the  three  Socratic 
theses — scepticism,  spiritual  affirmation,  and  the 
paradoxical  identification  of  virtue  and  know- 
ledge. Metaphysics  differs  from  philosophy  in 
this,  that  it  essays  to  give  a  consistent  explana- 
tion of  the  rerum  natura,  including  our  conscious- 
ness, in  the  terms  of  pure  reason,  thereby  playing 
false  to  the  law  of  scepticism  and  affecting  a 
rational  reconciliation  of  the  Socratic  dualism. 
266b  "^  Reason  in  itself  is  the  faculty  of  combining  and 
dividing.  Thus,  in  what  may  be  broadly  called 
the  world  of  science,  reason  is  properly  employed 
in  combinations  ending  in  mathematical  unity 
and  in  divisions  proceeding  to  the  infinitesimal. 
It  fulfils  also  a  most  important  function  in  philo- 
sophy, so  long  as  it  follows  the  perception  of 


METAPHYSICS  233 

actual  similarities  and  differences  in  what  may  be 
called  the  quantitative  field  of  our  moral  exper- 
ience; the  whole  sphere  of  practical  virtue  is  to 
this  extent  dependent  upon  it.  But  reason  be- 
comes metaphysical — or  eristic,  as  Plato  would 
have  said — the  moment  it  presumptuously  disre- 
gards the  duahsm  of  consciousness  and  attempts 
by  its  own  naked  force  to  build  up  a  theoretic 
world  of  abstract  imity  excluding  multiplicity  or 
of  abstract  multiplicity  excluding  unity.  Mor- 
ally expressed,  it  is  equally  the  error  of  metaphys- 
ics to  explain  away  the  reality  of  evil  in  favour  of 
some  conception  of  infinite  goodness  and  to  deny 
the  existence  of  the  absolute  Good  in  favour  of 
some  conception  of  infinite  relativity.^ 

The  former  error,  that  of  false  idealism,  crept 
into  the  Academy  at  an  early  date.  From  the 
commentary  of  Proclus  on  the  passage  in  the 
Timaeus  concerning  the  goodness  of  God  and 
God's  treatment  of  the  flux  of  necessity  in  crea- 
tion,^ it  appears  that  these  words  were  the  battle- 
ground of  two  great  schools  of  interpretation, 
echoes  of  whose  wrangling  still  disturb  the  air  of 
quiet  study.  The  leaders  of  one  of  these  sects 
were  Plutarch  and,  more  particularly,  Atticus 
(not,  of  course,  the  friend  of  Cicero,  but  a  writer 
of  the  second  half  of  the  second  century  a.d.), 

*  For  this  distinction  between  dialectic  and  eristic   (or 
metaphysic)  see  Philebus  17a. 

» See  the  preceding  chapter,  p.  221. 


234  PLATONISM 

who  saw  in  Plato  first  of  all  the  ethical  philoso- 
pher. To  them  the  distinction  between  good  and 
evil  was  primordial  and  eternal.  The  substratmn 
of  the  flux  existed  always,  and  received  its  im- 
pulse to  chaotic  motion  from  an  eternal  soul  of 
evil.  Here  they  would  have  been  wiser  had  they 
been  satisfied  with  Plato's  deliberate  choice  of  the 
ambiguous  word  "necessity"  for  the  nature  of 
this  substratum,  instead  of  laying  undue  empha- 
sis on  a  phrase  in  the  Laws  and  erecting  our  con- 
896«  sciousness  of  good  and  evil  into  an  unverifiable 
hypothesis  of  two  world-souls.  A  more  serious 
error  lay  in  introducing  the  order  of  time  into  the 
moral  order,  and  in  insisting  on  a  temporal  pri- 
ority of  the  flux  and  the  soul  of  evil  to  the  event 
of  creation.  To  this  degree  they  changed  the 
allegory  of  the  Timaeus  to  a  rationahzed  transac- 
tion, and  laid  themselves  open  to  charges  of  in- 
consistency which  their  opponents  were  not  slow 
to  drive  home. 

The  other  school,  represented  by  Porphyry, 
lamblichus,  and  the  later  Neoplatonists  general- 
ly, including  Proclus  himself,  sought  for  the  car- 
dinal doctrine  of  Plato  in  intellectual  Ideas  (de- 
spite the  fact  that  Plato  had  subordinated  these 
unmistakably  to  the  ethical  order  of  which  alone 
we  have  pure  knowledge),  and  so  virtually  de- 
nied the  antinomy  of  good  and  evil  in  favour  of  a 
rationally  unified  conception  of  the  universe. 
Starting  with  the  assumption  of  a  superessential 


METAPHYSICS  JBSff 

monism,  they  rebuked  the  views  of  their  dualistic 
opponents  as  impiously  abrogating  either  the 
goodness  or  the  omnipotence  of  God.  If  God, 
they  said,  is  both  absolutely  good  and  creatively 
omnipotent,  then  his  work  of  creation  must  be 
eternal  and  entirely  good.  Brought  face  to  face 
with  the  question  of  existing  evil,  they  explained 
it  away  by  a  vast  hocus-pocus  of  metaphysical 
emanations  and  subsumptions.  The  Whole  is 
absolutely  one  and  absolutely  good,  but  by  its 
very  attribute  of  being  it  must  be  productive 
of  other  being,  and  creation  becomes  a  process 
of  endless  self-division  of  the  One  which  some- 
how leaves  the  One  undivided.  The  members 
so  produced  are  good,  as  related  to  the  whole; 
they  may  appear  evil,  as  related  to  one  another. 
Evil  is  merely  a  contingent  of  subordinate  ex- 
istence*— all  of  which,  to  the  mind  hungering 
after  the  truth,  is  nothing  but  "words,  words, 
words." 

Now,  whatever  may  have  been  the  mistakes  of 
Atticus  otherwise,  in  his  insistence  on  the  prime 
importance  of  both  good  and  evil  as  facts  not  to 
be  juggled  out  of  sight  he  was  faithful  to  his 
master  in  the  matter  which  really  counted  philo- 
sophically ;  and,  in  general,  the  little  we  know  of 
him  from  Proclus  and  Eusebius  leads  us  to  es- 
teem him  as  one  of  the  few  genuine  Platonists, 

•  Uav  rh  KOK^  icotA  irapvw6<rrafft»  tan.  —  ProcllU,  /« 
Timaeum  116a. 


fm  PLATONISM 

and  to  regret  the  loss  of  his  works  as  a  calamity. 
It  is,  perhaps,  the  most  deplorable  event  in  the 
history  of  philosophy  that  the  true  tradition  of 
Platonism  was  swallowed  up  in  Neoplatonism 
and  never  to  this  day  has  escaped  from  the  verbal 
metaphysic  of  a  Proclus.* 

Plato's  own  attitude  towards  the  claims  of 
metaphysics  is  best  seen  in  the  Dialogue,  called 
by  the  name  of  his  great  monistic  predecessor,  in 
which  he  comes  to  close  grips  with  the  rational 
contradictions  inherent  in  the  doctrine  of  Ideas; 

*  There  is  an  interesting  passage  in  the  introduction  to 
Thomas  Taylor's  translation  of  the  Select  Works  of  Ploti- 
nus,  which  shows  how  the  leaders  of  the  romantic  revival, 
by  a  natural  affinity,  turned  for  their  Platonism  to  the 
Alexandrian  interpreters.  "For  though  Grantor,  Atticus, 
Albinus,  Galen,  and  Plutarch,"  he  says,  "were  men  of  great 
genius,  and  made  no  common  proficiency  in  philosophic  at- 
tainments, yet  they  appear  not  to  have  developed  the  pro- 
fundity oif  Plato's  conceptions;  they  withdrew  not  the  veil 
which  covers  his  secret  meaning,  like  the  curtains  which 
guarded  the  adytum  of  temples  from  the  profane  eye;  and 
they  saw  not  that  all  behind  the  veil  is  luminous,  and  that 
there  divine  spectacles  everywhere  present  themselves  to 
the  view.  This  task  was  reserved  for  men  who  were  born 
indeed  in  a  baser  age,  but  who  being  allotted  a  nature  simi- 
lar to  their  master  were  the  true  interpreters  of  his  sublime 
and  mystic  speculations.  Of  these  Plotinus  was  the  leader, 
and  to  him  this  philosophy  is  indebted  for  its  genuine  restor- 
ation, and  for  that  succession  of  philosophic  heroes 
[Porphyry,  lamblichus,  Proclus,  et  al.'],  who  were  lumi- 
nous links  of  the  golden  chain  of  deity." — ^And  still  today 
the  English  editor  of  the  Timaeus,  Mr.  Archer-Hind,  in  his 
note  to  the  passage  under  consideration  (SOa),  expressly 
ranges  himself  with  the  Neoplatonists. 


METAPHYSICS  237 

and  our  view  of  his  philosophy  is  hkely  in  the 
end  to  be  coloured  by  our  interpretation  of  this 
extraordinary  piece  of  writing.  Now  it  may  be 
admitted  at  once  that,  if  ever  there  was  a  prob- 
lem that  verified  the  proverb  quot  homines  tot 
sententiae,  it  is  the  meaning  of  the  Parmenides. 
The  Uterature  on  the  subject  is  enormous,  and  is 
based  on  views  not  only  divergent  in  various  de- 
grees but  often  mutually  destructive.  I  take  it 
that  the  Platonist  or  the  student  of  philosophy 
generally  will  at  least  be  grateful  for  a  classified 
survey  of  these  interpretations,  however  he  may 
feel  disposed  towards  the  new  interpretation 
which  I  have  the  temerity  to  add  to  the  list  al- 
ready portentously  long. 

To  begin  with  the  extremists.  There  are  those 
who  see  in  the  Dialogue  a  frank  and  unreserved 
attack  on  the  doctrine  of  Ideas,  and  who,  accord- 
ingly, reject  the  work  as  spurious,  on  the  ground, 
mainly,  that  Plato  himself  could  not  possibly 
have  treated  the  central  thesis  of  his  philosophy 
in  this  manner.  The  first  to  support  this  view  was 
Socher.°  The  other  extreme  is  represented  by 
Fouillee,  who  takes  the  Dialogue  throughout  as 
a  positive  argument  for  Ideas.®  His  position  is 
briefly  this:  in  the  first  part  of  the  Dialogue 
Parmenides  shows  that  the  union  of  contraries  in 
the  sensible  world  imphes  a  similar  union  of  con- 

"  Ueber  Platan's  Schriften,  published  in  1820. 
*  La  PhUotophie  de  Platon  I,  203,  204. 


238  PLATONISM 

traries  in  the  Ideas,  and  that  the  difficulties  which 
concern  the  participation  of  sensible  things  in 
Ideas  will  be  solved  when  we  see  how  one  Idea 
participates  in  another.  Hence  the  second  part 
of  the  Dialogue  takes  up  this  point,  and  demon- 
strates that  whatever  hypothesis  you  start  with, 
it  always  involves  the  primitive  union  of  contra- 
ries, the  radical  union  of  the  one  and  the  many. 
Thus,  whatever  pair  of  Ideas  you  may  consider, 
positive  and  negative,  you  will  always  find  a 
mediating  term  in  some  third  Idea,  so  that  all 
Ideas,  even  those  mutually  contradictory,  enter 
into  one  another  and  are  reconciled  in  the  su- 
preme Unity.  In  other  words,  for  Plato  read 
Hegel. 

To  these  two  extremes  should  be  added  Grote's 
cavalier  denial  of  any  consistent  meaning  at  all  in 
Plato.  He  regards  the  theory  of  Ideas  sup- 
ported by  Socrates  in  this  Dialogue  as  genuinely 
Platonic,  and  at  the  same  time  regards  Parme- 
nides'  attack  on  the  theory  as  "most  powerful" 
in  itself  and  as  beyond  the  reach  of  Plato's  an- 
swer. The  whole  Dialogue  has  no  other  purpose 
than  to  clear  the  mind  of  false  and  hasty  assump- 
tions :  "It  is  certainly  well  calculated  to  produce 
the  effect  intended — of  hampering,  perplexing, 
and  putting  to  shame,  the  affirmative  rashness  of 
a  novice  in  philosophy."' 

Now  these  interpretations  cannot  all  be  right, 

'  Plato  and  the  Other  Companions  of  Sokrates  II,  295. 


METAPHYSICS  239 

and  I  think  it  would  be  easy  to  demonstrate  that 
they  are  all  wrong.  As  for  Socher,  it  is  suffi- 
cient to  say  that  the  Dialogue  bears  on  every 
page  indubitable  signs  of  the  master's  hand,  and 
to  ask  who  else  could  have  written  it.  This  in- 
trinsic evidence  is  so  convincing  that  almost  all 
scholars  now  accept  the  work  as  authentic. 
Moreover,  the  objections  lose  their  point  as  soon 
as  we  have  found  (as  I  think  we  shall  find)  an 
interpretation  which  gives  the  Dialogue  an  im- 
portant and  integral  place  in  the  whole  meta- 
physical discussion  of  Plato's  later  years.  On 
the  other  hand,  Fouillee  quite  overshoots  the 
mark.  Virtually  to  ignore,  as  he  does,  the  val- 
idity of  the  arguments  against  Ideas  is  simply  to 
read  the  book  with  closed  mind.  As  for  the  sec- 
ond part,  even  Zeller,  from  whom  he  borrowed 
his  Hegelianizing  method,  recognized  that  the 
nature  of  the  antinomies  here  employed  indicates 
an  absolute  gulf  between  true  Being  and  the  em- 
pirical world  of  time  and  space.* 

Grote  maintains  his  position  with  his  usual 
cleverness  and  honesty,  but  I  doubt  if  he  has  any 
followers  today.  To  hold  that  Plato  never  at- 
tained a  philosophical  position  of  his  own,  and 
that  the  great  bulk  of  his  works  contains  no  posi- 
tive plan  or  conviction,  is  to  fly  in  the  face  of 
common  sense. 

Those  who  take  a  middle  ground  between  the 

^  Die  Philotophie  der  Griechen.*  II,  i,  565. 


240  PLATONISM 

extremes  of  Socher  and  Fouillee  are  so  numerous 
that  it  would  be  intolerably  tedious  to  deal  with 
them  individually.  We  can  get  the  same  result 
more  commodiously  by  a  rough  classification  of 
the  points  which,  with  negligible  shades  of  differ- 
ence, are  variously  combined  in  their  theories. 
On  one  point  they  pretty  well  agree :  they  nearly 
all  acknowledge  the  strength  of  the  Parmenidean 
attack  on  the  position  held  by  Socrates  in  this 
Dialogue;  they  differ  in  their  methods  of  avoid- 
ing the  disagreeable  consequences  of  this  admis- 
sion. They  all  make  Parmenides  the  mouthpiece 
of  Plato  in  this  first  part  of  the  Dialogue,  but 
to  some  of  them  the  "young"  Socrates  is  vainly 
attempting  to  support  an  embryonic  theory  of 
Ideas  which  Plato  had  now  outgrown,  whereas 
to  others  Socrates  is  arguing  for  a  theory  of 
Ideas  (as  entities  separate  from  the  world  of 
phenomena)  which  was  advanced  by  enemies  of 
Plato,  whether  frankly  as  their  own  or  in  Plato's 
name,  or  was  erroneously  supposed  to  be  Plato's 
by  inconsiderate  pupils  of  the  Academy.  By 
exploding  this  false  doctrine  Plato,  either  directly 
or  inferentially,  is  enforcing  the  genuine  doctrine 
of  Ideas  as  pure  conceptions  of  the  mind,  or  as 
"the  basis  of  potentiality,"  or  "scientific  laws,"  or 
"the  methodic  foundation  of  experience."  In 
other  words,  they  differ  in  naming  the  source  and 
degree  of  the  error  supported  by  Socrates,  but 
they  all  agree  in  holding  that,  in  one  way  or  an- 


METAPHYSICS  241 

other,  the  Dialogue  looks  to  a  rationalizing  recon- 
ciliation of  the  difficulties  inherent  in  the  doctrine 
of  Ideas ;  they  all,  in  various  ways,  belong  to  the 
metaphysical  school  represented  of  old  by  Pro- 
clus  and  in  modem  times  by  Hegel. 

Now  the  first  difficulty  in  these  explanations 
is  the  supposition  that  in  a  question  vital  to 
his  whole  philosophy  Plato  would  have  chosen 
Socrates  as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  doctrine  he 
wished  to  combat.  The  difficulty  is  not  quite  so 
overwhelming,  I  admit,  if  we  assume  that  the 
"young"  Socrates  is  arguing  for  a  genuine  Pla- 
tonism  now  outgrown  rather  than  for  a  pseudo- 
Platonism.  But  such  an  assumption  throws 
us  into  another  insurmountable  difficulty.  No 
doubt  in  the  course  of  his  growth  Plato  changed 
somewhat  in  his  attitude  towards  Ideas;  it  could 
hardly  be  otherwise.  But  there  is  nothing  in  his 
writings  to  indicate  such  a  complete  break  as 
must  be  assumed  by  this  explanation  of  the  Par- 
menides,  whereas,  on  the  contrary,  there  are  pas- 
sages in  his  latest  works  which  speak  strongly  for  ilwt'^/es?^ 
the  essential  continuity  of  his  philosophy  in  this 
respect. 

Against  those  who  would  see  in  Socrates  the 
champion  of  pseudo-Platonism,  there  are  two 
further  objections.  On  the  one  hand  the  concep- 
tualist  doctrine  of  Ideas  which  they  regard  as 
genuinely  Platonic  is  clearly  embraced  among  ^"i™*"****' 
the  various  explanations  set  up  by  Socrates  and 


242  PLATONISM 

knocked  down  by  Parmenides.  On  the  other 
Ibid.  134D  hand,  in  this  very  Dialogue  it  is  shown  that  the 
rejection  of  Ideas  as  existing  apart  in  a  sphere 
above  our  own  involves  the  rejection  also  of  the 
divine  government  and  knowledge  of  the  world — 
a  conclusion  so  abhorrent  to  Plato  that  he  could 
not  have  accepted  the  premise.  And  I  hold  it 
demonstrable  (though  to  prove  the  point  would 
require  a  separate  essay)  that  the  whole  recent 
movement  to  deprive  Platonic  Ideas  of  some 
sort  of  independent  reality  for  the  imagination 
is,  on  the  bare  face  of  it,  a  perversion  of  the 
simple  facts,  for  the  conscious  or  imconscious 
purpose  of  confirming  the  tendency  of  present- 
day  thought  by  the  authority  of  a  revered  name 
of  the  past. 

When  they  come  to  the  second  part  of  the 
Dialogue  these  mediators  take  different  and  con- 
tradictory grounds.  Some  of  them  hold  that 
Parmenides  remains  the  spokesman  for  Plato 
throughout,  and  that,  having  exploded  the  false 
doctrine  of  Ideas,  he  now  demonstrates  the  true 
doctrine.  To  these  the  same  reply  must  be  made 
as  was  made  to  Fouillee:  this  second  part  of  the 
Dialogue,  unless  violently  distorted,  is,  Hke  the 
first,  negative  from  beginning  to  end,  and  to  dis- 
cover in  it  a  positive  exposition  of  any  doctrine 
is  a  wanton  reading  of  what  is  not  written.  Oth- 
ers hold  that  Plato  first  uses  Parmenides  as  his 
own  mouthpiece  to  destroy  the  pseudo-doctrine 


METAPHYSICS  243 

foisted  upon  him  by  the  Eleatics,  and  then,  in  a 
super-refined  spirit  of  revenge,  turns  the  table 
by  making  Parmenides  exhibit  the  fallacies  of 
his  own  Eleatic  philosophy  of  the  one.  This  ex- 
planation contains,  as  we  shall  see,  a  half  truth, 
but  it  overreaches  itself  in  taking  Parmenides 
now  as  the  exponent  of  Platonic  truth  and  then 
as  the  exponent  of  Eleatic  untruth.  Plato  was 
subtle  enough,  in  all  conscience,  but  he  was  not 
quite  so  disconcertingly  double-faced  as  that. 
And,  further,  though  a  minor  result  of  the  sec- 
ond discussion  may  be  to  expose  the  untenability 
of  the  Eleatic  unity  in  its  absolute,  exclusive 
form,  the  primary  intention  and  achievement  of 
Parmenides  will  turn  out  to  be  of  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent nature. 

So  much  for  the  interpretations  which  rim 
counter  to  common  sense  or  to  plain  statements 
in  the  Dialogue  itself  or  to  the  whole  tenor  of 
Plato's  philosophy.  A  few  scholars  have  partly 
or  wholly  avoided  these  errors,  and  have  left  ex- 
planations which  are  rather  inadequate  than 
false.  Among  these  is  the  author  of  the  Greek 
Thinkers,  with  whom,  considering  his  general  at- 
titude towards  Greek  philosophy,  I  find  myself 
rather  unwillingly  yoked.  Gomperz  holds  that 
the  Parmenides  was  written  at  a  time  when 
Plato's  mind  was  in  a  state  of  fermentation.  At- 
tacks from  the  Megarians,  or  new  Eleatics,  had 
united  with  his  own  deepened  reflection  to  dis- 


«44  PLATONISM 

turb  him  with  difficulties  in  regard  to  the  very 
basis  of  his  metaphysical  theory  of  Ideas.  He 
could  not  at  this  time  answer  these  difficulties, 
neither  could  he  surrender  his  whole  philosophy. 
In  his  zeal  for  the  truth,  therefore,  he  brings  to- 
gether all  the  arguments  against  Ideas,  making 
no  discrimination  between  those  that  are  answer- 
able and  those  that  are  not.  In  this  way  he  de- 
livers himself,  so  to  speak,  and  is  free  to  pass  on. 
He  piles  up  all  sorts  of  argimients  against  the 
metaphysical  school  from  which  had  proceeded 
the  sharpest  attacks  on  the  theory  of  Ideas.  Af- 
ter the  date  of  the  Parmenides  we  see  two  things 
happening:  Plato's  searching  analysis  of  hostile 
doctrines  brings  out  by  way  of  indirect  proof  the 
inevitability  of  the  doctrine  of  Ideas,  and  the  trial 
through  which  he  has  passed  leads  him  to  modify 
his  own  principles.* 

One  thing  is  thus  seen  by  Gomperz  which 
ought  to  be  clear  to  any  one  who  reads  the  Dia- 
logue with  open  mind:  the  logic  against  Ideas  is 
conducted  with  relentless  rigour,  and  is  not  di- 
rected against  a  particular  form  of  the  doctrine 
but  against  all  its  forms,  including  conceptual- 
ism.'^' 

'  Griechische  Denker  II,  437-440. 

"  132b:  "Perhaps,"  says  Socrates,  "each  of  these  Ideas 
is  only  an  act  of  cognition,  and  is  nowhere  present  except  in 
the  mind."  Only  in  one  place  does  Parmenides  leave  the 
position  of  Socrates  unassailed.  Socrates  proposes  a  simile 
by  which  he  thinks  that  possibly  the  indivisible  integrity  of 


METAPHYSICS  «45 

But  another  thing  is  clear.  Plato  did  not  for 
a  moment  admit  that  this  logic,  however  rigor- 
ously conducted,  rendered  the  doctrine  of  Ideas 
in  itself  untenable.  As  we  have  seen,  he  con- 
tinued to  adhere  to  the  doctrine  in  his  later  works, 
and,  more  than  that,  this  very  Dialogue  contains 
direct  statements  of  his  adherence.  The  strong- 
est of  these  is  in  the  words  of  Parmenides  him- 
self, where,  at  the  close  of  the  discussion  which 
has  driven  Socrates  point  by  point  to  a  complete 
silence,  he  asks  what  is  to  be  done  about  philo-  issb 
sophy  if  we  surrender  our  belief  in  Ideas,  or 
whither  we  shall  turn  our  minds,  or,  indeed,  how 
we  shall  be  able  to  converse  at  all. 

Such  a  passage  ought  to  be  sufficient  in  itself 

the  Idea  may  be  reconciled  with  its  presence  in  the  multi- 
plicity of  objects  which  partake  of  its  nature:  "Just  as  day, 
being  one  and  the  same,  is  simultaneously  present  in  many 
places  yet  is  not  separate  from  itself  [that  is,  does  not  lose 
its  integrity  by  being  among  the  events  of  time],  so  each 
Idea  might  be  in  all  things  yet  remain  one  and  the  same" 
(181b).  Instead  of  replying  to  this  argument,  Parmenides 
shifts  the  comparison  to  a  tent  spread  over  a  number  of 
men;  in  which  case  not  the  whole  tent  but  only  a  portion 
of  it  should  properly  be  said  to  be  over  each  man.  Did 
Plato  himself  fail  to  see  that  by  shifting  the  simile  from 
time  to  place  he  was  leaving  the  real  point  untouched,  or 
did  he  perceive  the  difficulty  of  determining  the  nature  of 
time  itself,  whether  it  has  any  objective  reality,  and  so 
shrink  from  a  discussion  which  would  have  been  out  of  all 
proportion  to  the  scope  of  the  Dialogue?  All  the  difficul- 
ties raised  by  Parmenides  involve  the  conception  of  Ideas 
as  in  tpace.  Can  a  metaphysical  psychology  avoid  this 
fallacy  ? 


ft^6  PLATONISM 

to  refute  those  who  find  in  the  Parmenides  any 
surrender  of  the  distinctly  Platonic  doctrine  of 
Ideas,  but  its  force  and  emphasis  are  doubled 
when  we  remember  that  it  does  not  stand  alone, 
but  is  a  repetition  of — rather  a  brief  reference  to 
— Plato's  constant  argument  against  the  anti- 
ideahsts  of  the  Heraclitean  and  Protagorean 
school.  This  point  is  important  enough  in  itself 
and  in  its  bearing  on  the  place  of  the  Parmenides 
in  the  whole  drift  of  Plato's  metaphysical  period 
to  warrant  us  in  pausing  a  moment  to  consider 
such  a  passage  as  the  close  of  the  Cratylus.  The 
bulk  of  this  Dialogue  is  given  up  to  a  series  of 
linguistic  puzzles  which  have  been  one  of  the 
bugbears  of  Platonic  students.  Many  of  the 
derivations  suggested  by  Plato  are  so  absurdly 
extravagant  as  to  force  the  conclusion  that  he 
was  ridiculing  the  pretensions  of  certain  etymo- 
logists of  the  age;  yet  others,  again,  seem  to  be 
advanced  quite  soberly  by  him,  and  the  reader  is 
left  with  no  criterion  to  distinguish  between 
satire  and  serious  exposition.  This  bewildering 
medley  of  fun  and  earnestness  is  not  absent  in 
other  Dialogues;  is  indeed  one  of  the  marks  of 
the  Platonic  method.  But  whatever  Plato's  atti- 
tude may  have  been  towards  the  legitimacy  or 
illegitimacy  of  the  current  etymological  science 
of  the  day,  he  seems  to  have  felt  that  the  Hera- 
clitean notion  of  the  flux  was  natural  to  the  un- 
reflecting mass  of  men  and  was  deeply  imbedded 


METAPHYSICS  247 

in  the  elementary  substance  of  language.  Any 
seeker  for  the  truth,  therefore,  must  free  his  mind 
from  the  implications  of  conmion  speech  and 
train  himself  to  look  at  things  as  they  are.  The 
fact  is,  says  Socrates  at  the  close  of  his  discus-  439c  ft 
sion  with  the  "young"  Cratylus,  that  those  who 
gave  this  colour  to  language  did  so,  not  because 
our  world  is  a  huge  perpetual  flux,  but  because 
their  own  minds  were  revolving  dizzily  in  a  sort 
of  whirl,  into  which  they  had  fallen  and  are 
dragging  us  after  them.  The  only  escape  for  us 
is  not  to  consider  individual  objects  which  may 
be  good  or  beautiful,  and  the  like,  and  which  ap- 
pear to  us  to  be  continually  changing,  but  to  fix 
our  minds  on  Ideas,  such  as  the  good  itself,  the 
beautiful  itself.  For  how  can  we  even  give  a 
name  to  a  thing  which  is  now  this  and  now  that, 
always  altering,  and  slipping  away  from  us  at 
the  very  moment  we  are  speaking  of  it?  There 
is  no  knowledge  of  such  a  thing;  for  just  when 
you  are  going  to  know  it,  off  it  goes  into  some- 
thing else,  so  that  you  have  no  chance  to  learn 
what  it  is  or  what  qualities  it  has.  There  isn't 
any  knowledge — nothing  to  be  known  and  no 
one  to  know,  if  all  things  are  in  this  state  of  un- 
ceasing flux.  Granted  the  faculty  of  knowledge 
in  us,  then  there  must  be  something  for  it  to 
know;  then  there  must  be  those  Ideas  of  good- 
ness itself  and  beauty  itself,  and  the  like,  which 
do  not  belong  to  the  cosmic  stream  and  whirl. 


248  PLATONISM 

It  may  be  hard  to  decide  between  the  truth  of 
these  Ideas  and  what  the  Herachteans  and 
Protagoreans  and  all  the  rest  of  them  believe, 
but  certainly  he  is  a  pretty  poor  creature  who 
will  permit  the  life  of  his  soul  to  be  determined 
by  the  mere  implications  of  common  speech,  and 
will  ignorantly  assert  that  there  is  nothing  sound 
in  the  universe  but  that  the  whole  thing  is  a  sort 
of  leaky  vessel  continually  at  drip.  How  would 
he  differ  from  a  man  who  was  suffering  from  a 
rheum,  and  was  convinced  accordingly  that  the 
whole  world  was  in  a  state  of  rheumy  fiuction? 
You  at  least,  Cratylus,  are  still  young,  and 
ought  not  to  accept  these  current  theories  out  of 
hand,  but  should  investigate  them  bravely  and 
honestly. 

Now  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  brief  ex- 
hortation to  the  "young"  Socrates  was  written 
in  the  same  tone  and  to  the  same  general  end  as 
that  to  the  "young"  Cratylus.  The  interpreta- 
tion of  the  Parmenides  thus  depends  on  the  solu- 
tion of  this  crux:  we  have  the  whole  doctrine  of 
Ideas  subjected  to  a  process  of  destructive  logic 
to  which  Plato  makes  no  direct  answer  either 
here  or  anywhere  else  in  his  writings,  and  by  the 
side  of  this  we  have  an  unwavering  statement  of 
the  reality  and  vital  importance  of  Ideas.  Given 
this  dilemma  the  only  way  of  escape  would  seem 
to  be  through  holding  that  Ideas  do  not  come  to 
us  by  a  process  of  metaphysical  logic,  but  by 


METAPHYSICS  249 

means  of  some  direct  experience  independent  of 
such  logic,  and  that  the  method  of  reasoning  em- 
ployed against  them  by  Parmenides,  while  per- 
fectly sound  in  itself,  is  all  in  vacuo,  so  to  speak, 
and  has  no  bearing  upon  their  existence  or  non- 
existence. No  other  interpretation  would  ap- 
pear to  be  tenable,  and  as  a  matter  of  fact  the 
second,  and  larger,  part  of  the  Dialogue  is  di- 
rected to  exhibiting  the  limitations,  and  the  use- 
fulness within  these  limitations,  of  what  I  have 
called  the  process  of  metaphysical  logic.  To  un- 
derstand this  point  we  must  look  a  Uttle  more 
closely  into  the  antecedents  and  structure  of  the 
Dialogue. 

Parmenides,  the  principal  speaker  of  the  Dia- 
logue which  bears  his  name,  was  the  pre-Socratic 
philosopher  from  whom  more  than  from  any 
other,  unless  it  be  Pythagoras,  Plato's  thoughts 
received  their  colour.  His  name  sounded  to 
Plato  out  of  antiquity  with  peculiar  awfulness, 
and  even  when  disagreeing  with  him  the  younger  ^^'IS*^* 
man  could  not  forget  his  veneration.  Against 
all  the  other  philosophers,  from  Homer  down, 
who  had  seen  in  the  world  only  the  play  of  flux 
and  perpetual  mutation,  Parmenides  stood  forth 
in  lonely  grandeur,  a  man,  in  the  Homeric 
phrase,  "reverend  and  dreadful,"  a  sage  able  to 
impress  Socrates  with  "the  noble  depth  of  his 
mind."  In  Elea  of  Magna  Graecia  he  had  set 
up  a  school  in  direct  opposition — so  it  seemed  at 


250  PLATONISM 

least  to  Plato  and  the  later  men — ^to  that  of 
Heraelitus.  In  his  cosmic  poem  he  represents 
himself  as  carried  by  the  Smi-maidens  up  to  the 
Gate  of  Night  and  Day,  which  is  opened  to  him 
by  the  goddess  Dike  (Right,  Justice),  and  there 
in  the  realm  of  heavenly  light  he  is  instructed  in 
the  difference  between  truth  and  deceptive  opin- 
ion. The  whole  vision  was  to  be  taken  over  by 
Plato  in  The  Republic  when  searching  for  the 
nature  of  justice,  and  worked  up  into  his  sublime 
comparison  of  the  supreme  good  in  the  moral 
sphere  with  the  light-giving  sun  in  the  physical 
sky.  And  the  truth  as  Parmenides  saw  it  was 
one  aspect,  incomplete  and  therefore  partly  false, 
of  what  Plato  was  to  hold.  Our  opinion  of  the 
world  of  change  and  appearance  is  a  mere  decep- 
tion; rather,  such  a  world  is  not,  for  the  reality 
of  being  is  the  reality  of  thought,  or  knowledge, 
one  and  indivisible,  without  beginning  or  end, 
without  growth  or  decay,  finite  in  itself  and  with 
nothing  beyond  it,  with  no  colour  or  motion  or 
quality  of  perception.  The  universe  of  Parme- 
nides was  the  pantheism  of  his  predecessor  Xeno- 
phanes,  but  as  it  would  be  expressed  by  an  intui- 
tive philosopher  instead  of  a  religious  dreamer. 

Now  it  was  inevitable  that  this  one-sided  per- 
ception, or  intuition,  of  the  unity  underlying  all 
things  should  have  been  met  with  ridicule  on  the 
part  of  those  who  could  see  nothing  but  the  world 
of  flux,  and  it  became  necessary  for  the  Eleatic 


METAPHYSICS  Ul 

pupils  of  Parmenides  to  support  their  master  by 
means  of  whatever  logical  instnmient  they  could 
lay  hands  on.  The  shrewdest  of  these  defenders 
was  Zeno,  who  sought  to  discomfit  the  enemy  by 
bringing  confusion  into  their  own  camp.  The 
Herachteans  had  undertaken  to  dispose  of  the 
Eleatic  unity  by  showing  the  absurdity  of  a 
theory  which,  by  its  maintenance  of  indivisibility, 
involved  the  denial  of  our  common  perceptions 
of  motion  and  change,  and  by  its  insistence  on 
absolute  uniformity,  involved  the  denial  of  all 
quahties  to  things,  thus  reducing  the  mind  to  a 
state  of  complete  negation.  Zeno  did  not,  in- 
deed could  not,  answer  these  criticisms  directly, 
but  he  did  undertake  to  strengthen  the  Parmeni- 
dean  position  by  setting  forth  the  equal  absurdi- 
ties that  followed  if  we  rejected  unity  and  made 
multiplicity  the  essence  of  all  things.  One  of  his 
argimnients  was  the  famous  riddle  of  Achilles  and 
the  tortoise.  Suppose  Achilles,  who  runs  ten 
times  faster  than  the  tortoise,  tries  to  catch  a 
tortoise  that  has  a  start  of  ten  feet.  By  the  time 
he  has  traversed  these  ten  feet,  the  tortoise  will 
be  one  foot  in  advance.  When  he  has  traversed 
this  foot,  the  tortoise  will  be  a  tenth  of  a  foot  in 
advance ;  and  so  on  ad  infinitum.  That  is  to  say, 
on  the  assumption  that  time  and  space  are  di- 
visible this  division  will  proceed  without  end,  and 
Achilles  never  can  overtake  the  tortoise;  which 
is  absurd  on  the  face  of  it.    Another  argument 


252  PLATONISM 

of  Zeno's  turned  on  the  contradictions  that  must 
arise  from  the  ascription  of  qualities  to  things. 
For  instance,  if  you  say  that  A  is  like  B,  this  will 
imply  that  A  is  unUke  something  else,  so  that 
you  are  driven  to  the  paradox  of  holding  that  A 
is  at  the  same  time  hke  and  unlike ;  which,  again, 
is  absurd. 

All  this,  of  course,  might  be  waved  aside  as 
an  amusing  play  of  logomachy,  but  in  fact  it  in- 
troduced a  real  evil  into  the  life  of  a  people  who 
were  already  prone  by  nature  to  lose  themselves 
in  linguistic  subtleties  and  to  prize  sheer  clever- 
ness above  simple  veracity.  Instead  of  throw- 
ing up  the  whole  game  the  Heracliteans  answered 
Zeno  in  kind,  while  on  the  other  hand  the  Megar- 
ian  school  of  EucHdes  took  up  the  cudgels  for 
the  Eleatics  and  carried  their  logic  to  the  ex- 
treme of  fatuity.  Hence  arose  that  art  of  eristic 
which  threatened  for  a  while  to  reduce  the  whole 
of  Greek  philosophy  to  a  vain  babble  of  conten- 
tious words.  The  very  essence  of  eristic,  it  will 
be  seen,  lies  in  the  metaphysical  use  of  reason,  or 
logic,  without  regard  for,  or  in  flat  contradic- 
tion to,  the  facts  of  experience  and  intuition.  By 
the  time  of  Plato's  maturity  these  successors  of 
the  sophists  were  expending  their  strength  in 
ever  vainer  and  more  perplexing  enigmas,  while 
of  the  sincere  aspiration  after  the  truth  it  might 
be  said, 

"Naked  and  poor  thou  goest.  Philosophy  I" 


METAPHYSICS  253 

The  wrangle  had  spread  until  it  embraced  Plato's 
own  doctrine  of  Ideas,  which  hitherto  he  had  held 
rather  as  a  matter  of  intuition  and  as  an  unques- 
tioned necessity  of  the  imagination  than  as  a 
reasoned  conviction,  and  was  forcing  him  in  self- 
defence  into  what  may  be  called  his  metaphysical 
period. 

One  of  his  aims  at  this  time,  perhaps  his  chief 
aim,  was  to  expose  the  vanity  of  the  new  form  of 
sophistry — for  it  was  at  bottom  precisely  the 
same  spirit  as  that  which  he  had  opposed  in  his 
earher  Dialogues,  but  disguised  now  in  the  sober 
garb  of  metaphysics — and  in  its  place  to  estab- 
lish the  true  dialectic,  that  is  to  say  the  general- 
izing ascent  of  the  reason  without  losing  from 
sight,  indeed  by  using  as  its  firm  stepping-stones, 
those  innate  perceptions  of  moral  and  aesthetic 
consequences  which  he  had  hypostatized  as  Ideas. 
Already,  in  The  Republic^  he  had  expressed  his  4S4a 
scorn  of  those  who,  by  reason  of  their  inabiUty  to 
distinguish  Ideas,  gave  themselves  up  to  the  pur- 
suit of  verbal  oppositions,  thinking  they  were 
practising  dialectic,  or  the  true  philosophical  dis- 
course, when  in  fact  they  were  indulging  in  mere 
eristic.  In  his  systematic  exposition  of  this  evil, 
the  first  task  would  be  to  bring  into  the  light  the 
lurking  absurdities  of  the  Heraclitean  meta- 
physic  of  the  flux ;  this  he  had  done  in  the  Craty- 
liiSj  Euthydemus,  and  Theaetetus  with  a  drastic 
power  in  comparison  with  which  the  campaign 


264  PLATONISM 

of  Zeno  and  the  other  Eleatics  was  mere  child's 
play.  Now,  in  the  Parmenides,  he  would  employ 
the  same  weapon,  only  with  greater  respect  for 
the  persons  concerned,  against  the  Eleatics  and 
Megarians,  and  at  the  same  time  would  investi- 
gate the  vaHdity  and  scope  of  the  whole  meta- 
physical, eristic  method. 

For  this  purpose  he  took  advantage  of  the  oc- 
casion when  the  aged  Parmenides  had  visited 
Athens  with  his  pupil  Zeno,  and  had  there  met 
and  talked  with  Socrates,  then  a  "very  young 
man."  There  are,  I  know,  difficulties  in  the  way 
of  accepting  this  meeting  as  historical,  but  Plato 
mentions  it  so  often,  and  in  such  a  manner,  that 
we  are  almost  bound  to  regard  it  not  only  as  a 
fact  but  as  one  to  which  Socrates  was  fond  of 
alluding.  That,  however,  is  unessential.  Whe- 
ther as  a  fact  or  fiction,  we  are  told  in  the  Par- 
menides that  Zeno  has  been  reading  those  treat- 
ises of  his  in  which,  as  I  have  said,  he  undertook 
to  support  the  Parmenidean  unity  by  showing 
that  the  multiplicity  assumed  in  its  place  by  the 
Heracliteans  led  to  even  greater  paradoxes.  So- 
crates listens  attentively,  grasps  the  point  of  the 
argument,  but  has  a  modest  question  to  ask.  I 
see,  he  says,  that  material  phenomena  are  at  the 
same  time  both  one  and  many ;  for  instance  I,  as 
I  stand  here,  am  one  if  I  am  taken  as  a  separate 
integral  member  of  this  group  of  men,  but  I  am 
many  if  you  consider  me  as  composed  of  parts. 


METAPHYSICS  265 

right  and  left,  upper  and  lower.  I  can  under- 
stand how  your  logic  by  laying  hold  of  these 
contraries  will  reduce  our  reason  to  a  paradoxi- 
cal impasse.  That  seems  easy  enough  if  you 
start  with  material  phenomena.  But  I  should 
hke  to  hear  how  you  would  apply  this  process  to 
Ideas.  What,  exclaims  Parmenides,  with  con- 
cealed pleasure,  wishing  to  bring  out  his  clever 
young  questioner,  do  you  believe  in  these  Ideas 
as  real  things  having  an  existence  apart  from 
phenomena?  Whereupon  follows  the  famous 
attack  on  the  doctrine,  which  turns  on  the  diffi- 
culty of  comprehending  how  an  Idea  can  be  im- 
manent in  the  many  particular  phenomena  which 
bear  its  name  without  losing  its  integral  unity,  or 
how  phenomena  can  participate  in  the  Idea  with- 
out forgoing  their  character  of  changing  multi- 
plicity. Socrates  is  completely  blocked  in  all  his 
efforts  to  explain  away  this  difficulty — indeed 
neither  Plato  nor  any  one  else  has  ever  found  a 
positive  solution  of  the  paradox — and  is  ready 
to  throw  up  his  position  as  untenable ;  when  Par- 
menides checks  him.  No,  says  the  old  warrior, 
you  cannot  do  that,  for  without  Ideas  you  are 
confronted  by  a  still  more  disastrous  paradox; 
unless  these  generalizations  of  the  mind  corre- 
spond to  things  in  some  way  really  existent  there 
can  be  no  philosophy,  no  knowledge,  no  meaning 
at  all  in  conversation.  You  yourself  have  de- 
clared that  the  logic  of  Zeno  did  not  touch  the 


256  PLATONISM 

simple  fact  of  experience  which  presents  phe- 
nomena to  us  as  at  the  same  time  both  one  and 
many,  and  you  need  only  carry  the  method  out  to 
its  legitimate  end  to  discover  that  it  will  leave 
you  in  possession  also  of  your  intuitive  belief  in 
the  parallel  existence  of  Ideas  and  phenomena. 
Then,  after  some  hesitation,  Parmenides  is  per- 
suaded to  give  an  illustration  of  this  self-denying 
use  of  eristic.  Now  it  should  be  observed  here 
that  this  interpretation  of  the  first  part  of  the 
Dialogue — in  itself  the  only  one  which  does  not 
do  violence  to  the  plain  sense  of  the  text — avoids 
the  absurdity  of  supposing  that  Plato  would  have 
selected  Socrates  for  the  spokesman  of  a  theory 
he  meant  to  denounce.  To  represent  Socrates, 
when  "very  young,"  as  not  yet  competent  to 
maintain  his  position  with  the  full  mastery  of 
dialectic  is  quite  another  matter,  and  is  in  perfect 
conformity  with  Plato's  own  transition,  not  from 
one  philosophy  to  another,  but  from  what  may  be 
called  his  purely  intuitional  period  to  the  years 
of  metaphysical  examination  into  his  creed. 

As  for  Parmenides'  eristical  exhibition,  which 
forms  the  second  part  of  the  Dialogue,  it  is  just 
one  of  the  terrible  things  of  philosophy;  heaven 
^*i37r''^"  forbid  that  I  should  ask  my  reader  "to  swim 
through  such  and  so  great  a  sea  of  words."  But 
without  a  glance  at  the  main  points  of  the  dis- 
cussion we  cannot  assure  ourselves  of  the  general 
purport  of  this  Dialogue  or  imderstand  the  drift 
of  the  Dialogues  that  follow. 


METAPHYSICS  267 

Pannenides,  then,  condescends  to  submit  his 
own  doctrine  of  the  One  as  a  corpus  vile  to  be 
tried  out  by  this  eristical  method.  He  will  first 
take  the  statement  that  the  One  is  and  trace  the 
consequences,  and  will  afterwards  deal  in  the 
same  way  with  the  contrary  statement  that  the 
One  is  not.  The  argument  thus  drags  its  awful 
length  through  these  eight  hypotheses  (I  alter 
their  order  as  noted) : 

A  (This  stands  first  in  the  Dialogue) :  The 
One  is  posited  as  absolute  and  indivisible.  It  fol- 
lows from  this  hypothesis  that  the  One  is  devoid 
of  all  qualities,  incapable  of  being  known  or  in 
any  way  considered  or  named  or  uttered. 

B  (Second  in  the  Dialogue) :  But  by  the  very 
hypothesis  that  the  One  is  we  attribute  being  to 
it.  Thus  the  One  is  presented  as  a  duality  of 
unity  and  being;  this  duality  is  subject  to  further 
division,  and  the  One  becomes  endlessly  divisible 
and  possessed  of  infinite  qualities.  But  to  say 
that  it  possesses  every  possible  pair  of  contrary 
qualities  is  the  same  as  to  say  that  it  has  no  quah- 
ties ;  and  we  are  reduced  to  a  similar  absurdity. 

Now  let  us  consider  the  consequences  of  this 
hypothesis  for  the  Many  (ta  alia,  that  is,  the  Oth- 
ers, all  things  conceivable  besides  the  One) : 

C  (Fourth  in  the  Dialogue) :  If  the  Many 
are  taken  as  having  no  participation  in  the  One, 
i.e.,  as  absolute  multiplicity,  it  follows  that,  like 
the  One  of  A,  they  will  have  no  qualities  at  all, 
and  are  utterly  inconceivable. 


268  PLATONISM 

D  (Third  in  the  Dialogue) :  If  the  Many 
participate  in  the  One,  then,  like  the  One  of  B, 
they  will  have  all  contrary  qualities,  which  is 
equally  repugnant  to  reason. 

So  far  we  have  been  arguing  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  the  One  is ;  now  let  us  take  the  contrary 
supposition  that  the  One  is  not: 

E  ( Sixth  in  the  Dialogue) :  If  the  One  is  not, 
regarded  absolutely,  we  get  the  same  total  nega- 
tion as  in  A. 

F  (Fifth  in  the  Dialogue) :  But  by  the  very 
hypothesis  that  the  One  is  not  we  associate  being 
with  it.  To  say  that  the  One  is  not  is  a  different 
thing  from  saying  that  the  Not-One  is  not,  and 
in  this  way  altereity,  the  property  of  difference, 
is  brought  into  the  Not-One,  and  the  Not-One 
(like  the  One  in  hypothesis  B)  becomes  possessed 
of  all  different  qualities.  (This  hypothesis,  it 
should  be  noted,  is  in  metaphysical  form  the  old 
thesis  which  Plato  had  wrestled  with  in  earlier 
Dialogues  and  was  to  discuss  at  length  in  the 
Sophist,  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  false 
statement,  for  the  reason  that  it  is  impossible  to 
speak  what  is  not.) 

G  (Eighth  in  the  Dialogue) :  If  we  take  the 
One  as  not  being  absolutely,  it  follows  that  the 
Many  will  have  no  qualities  at  all  and  there  is 
nothing. 

H  (Seventh  in  the  Dialogue) :  If  the  One  is 
not  but  the  Many  are,  it  follows  that,  by  seeming 
to  be  composed  of  units,  the  Many  will  have  all 
contrary  qualities. 


METAPHYSICS  259 

Now,  there  are  two  ways  of  looking  at  these 
hypotheses.  According  to  most  of  the  interpre- 
ters one  set  (A,  C,  E,  G)  is  meant  to  show  the 
impossibiUty  of  positing  an  absolute  One  apart 
from  the  Many,  whereas  another  set  (B,  D,  F, 
H)  demonstrates  the  reconciliation  of  the  One 
and  the  Many.  Thus  hypothesis  A  leads  to  a 
total  negation,  whereas  hypothesis  B,  by  recon- 
ciling the  One  and  the  Many,  leads  to  the  possi- 
bihty  of  predication  and  corresponds  with  actual 
experience.  The  whole  argument,  in  a  word,  is 
a  continuation  of  the  assault  on  the  doctrine  of 
Ideas  as  entities  of  real  existence  apart  from 
phenomena  (chdrista),  and  a  proof  that,  by  some 
theory  of  conceptualism  or  the  hke,  they  are  in 
and  of  the  Many. 

The  other  way  of  interpreting  the  argument 
is  to  accept  all  the  hypotheses  as  resulting  equally 
in  an  impasse,  since  it  is  just  as  absurd  to  say  that 
a  thesis  leads  to  the  simultaneous  possession  of 
all  contrary  qualities  as  to  say  that  it  leads  to  the 
total  negation  of  qualities.  And  this  in  my  judg- 
ment, as  my  wording  of  the  summaries  above  will 
have  made  evident,  is  the  only  interpretation  the 
language  of  Plato  will  bear.  Of  course,  if  you 
care  to  do  violence  to  the  text,  you  may  get  any 
meaning  out  of  it  you  choose;  and  that  capable 
scholars  are  not  above  using  violence  can  be 
shown  from  a  shining  example.  After  deducing 
from  the  second  hypothesis  the  possibility  of  at- 


260  PLATONISM 

tributing  all  qualities  to  the  One,  Plato  adds  a 
corollary  in  which,  by  a  subtle  analysis  of  the  time 
element,  he  shows  how  this  is  the  same  as  saying 
that  the  One  would  have  no  qualities.  Very 
good.  But  how  does  Professor  Bumet  in  his 
summary  of  the  hypotheses  deal  with  this  double- 
edged  argument?  He  states  the  conclusion  of 
the  hypothesis  proper  thus : 

"Therefore  One  partakes  of  past,  present,  and 
future;  it  was,  it  is,  it  will  be;  it  has  become,  is 
becoming,  and  will  become.  It  can  be  the  object 
of  knowledge,  judgment,  and  sensation;  it  can 
be  named  and  spoken  of."^^ 

That  is  as  close  to  the  Greek  as  need  be;  but 
turn  now  to  his  statement  of  the  conclusion  of 
the  corollary: 

"It  is  the  instantaneous  which  makes  all 
changes  from  one  opposite  to  another  possible, 
and  it  is  in  the  instant  of  change  that  what 
changes  has  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  of  its 
opposite  qualities."^^ 

Compare  this  with  the  Greek  which  is  literally 
as  follows: 

"By  the  same  token  it  [the  One],  passing  from 
one  to  many  and  from  many  to  one,  is  neither 
one  nor  many,  is  neither  divided  nor  combined. 
And,  passing  from  like  to  unlike  and  from  un- 
like to  like,  it  is  neither  like  nor  unlike,  neither 
made  like  nor  made  unlike;  and,  passing  from 

"  Greek  Philosophy,  Part  I,  p.  268. 
^^Jhid. 


METAPHYSICS  261 

small  to  large  and  to  equal  and  to  the  opposites, 
it  would  be  neither  small  nor  large  nor  equal, 
neither  increased  nor  diminished  nor  made 
equal." 

Is  it  too  much  to  say  that,  by  transposing  this 
statement  from  its  negative  to  a  positive  form, 
Burnet  has  come  pretty  close  to  betraying  his 
author?  The  case  is  still  worse  with  a  critic  like 
Natorp,  who  out  of  an  argument  ending  thus  in 
complete  negation  draws  a  positive  meaning  such 
as  this: 

"By  the  instrumentality  of  continuity,  as  we 
may  now  put  it  briefly,  the  way  is  prepared  for 
a  reconciliation  between  the  absolute  position 
(the  thesis)  and  the  relative  (the  antithesis). 
The  possibiUty  is  opened  for  the  passage  of  the 
absolute  position  into  relativity,  that  is  to  say, 
for  the  passage  of  the  Idea,  first  conceived  as 
pure  thought,  the  a  priori,  into  experience,  which 
means  the  realm  of  relativity.  The  first  founda- 
tion is  laid  for  the  possibility  of  experience  as 
methodically  assured  knowledge."^* 

There  is  not  a  hint  of  all  this  in  Plato;  it  is 
Kant  or  Hegel  or  Natorp.  The  conclusions  of 
the  second  hypothesis  and  of  its  corollary  ought 
to  be  enough  in  themselves  to  show  that  no  such 
inference  can  be  drawn.    But  to  clinch  the  fact, 

*'  Plato's  Ideenlehre,  p.  256. — How  describe  this  typical 
product  of  modern  Platonic  scholarship?  If  I  dared  express 
my  real  feeling,  I  should  say  that,  beneath  its  imposing 
armour  of  technical  jargon,  the  book  was  a  nightmare  of 
niaiseries. 


262  PLATONISM 

the  whole  Dialogue  ends  sharply  with  this 
formidable  summary:  "Thus,  it  seems,  whether 
One  is  or  is  not,  both  it  and  the  Many,  regarded 
both  in  themselves  and  in  relation  to  each  other, 
all  in  every  way  both  are  and  are  not,  both  have 
appearance  and  have  not."  How  a  scholar  can 
have  this  consummation  before  his  eyes  and  yet 
fail  to  see  that  all  the  eight  hypotheses  must  be 
taken  without  distinction  as  reductions  to  the 
absurd,  is  beyond  my  comprehension. 

Certain  owlish  persons  who  are  aware  of  this 
consequence  have  worried  themselves  over  the 
method  by  which  it  was  obtained.  It  is  full  of 
fallacies  and  false  reasoning,  exclaims  Apelt,^* 
and  will  waive  the  whole  thing  as  a  piece  of 
youthful  indiscretion.  Fallacies,  quotha!  It  is 
indeed  an  arsenal  of  fallacies;  rather,  it  is  the 
fundamental  fallacy  of  metaphysics  from  the  be- 
ginning until  now,  stripped  of  its  garb  of  irrele- 
vant truths  and  laid  bare  to  the  gaze  of  any  who 
will  see.  For  I  take  it  that  any  metaphysic 
which  attempts  to  give  an  account  of  the  ulti- 
mate nature  of  things,  the  rerum  natura,  by  the 
process  of  pure  reason  will  impale  itself  on  one 
or  the  other  horn  of  this  dilemma:  either  it  will 
cling  honestly  to  the  absolute  One  or  the  absolute 
Many,  and  so  move  about  in  the  void,  with  no 
content  of  meaning;  or  it  will  surreptitiously 

^*  "Wahres  Arsenal  von  Erschleichungen  und  Sophismen," 
Beitrdge,  p.  32. 


METAPHYSICS  263 

merge  the  absolute  One  in  the  concrete  one  or 
the  absolute  Many  in  the  concrete  many,  and  so 
fall  into  a  dishonest  mixture,  or  "reconciliation," 
of  contraries.  This  is  not  the  place  to  support 
such  a  charge  by  detailed  illustrations,  but  I  think 
it  would  not  be  hard  to  show  how  perfectly  the 
error  of  Spinoza's  system  is  exposed  by  Plato's 
second  hypothesis  (B).  Compare  with  the 
working  out  of  that  hypothesis  Spinoza's  effort 
to  deduce  all  the  contrary  qualities  of  phenome- 
nal existence  from  the  absolute  One:  "Transeo 
iam  ad  ea  explicanda,  quae  ex  Dei  sive  entis 
aeterni  et  infiniti  essentia  necessario  debuerunt 
sequi:  non  quidem  omnia  (infinita  enim  infinitis 
modis  ex  ipsa  debere  sequi ).^^  In  like  manner 
the  scientific  conception  of  a  "block  universe," 
as  an  absolute  closed  system,  falls  under  the  third 
hypothesis  (D),  or,  in  the  Spencerian  form  of 
the  Unknowable  and  the  Knowable,  under  the 
fourth  hypothesis  (C).  On  the  other  side,  the 
various  forms  of  Pragmatism,  all  the  systems 
that  accept  only  the  absolute  flux,  including  the 
much-bruited  metaphysic  of  M.  Bergson,  will 
come  within  the  scope  of  one  or  another  of  the 
four  hypotheses  that  assume  the  One  as  not 
being. 

I  would  not  insist  on  this  modem  application ; 
but  at  least  I  do  not  see  how  the  second  part 
of  the  Dialogue  can  be  understood  otherwise  than 
"  Ethict  II,  Praef. 


264  PLATONISM 

as  an  endeavour  to  deal  in  such  a  manner  with 
the  metaphysic,  or  eristic,  which  had  sprung  up 
by  the  side  of  true  philosophy  in  Plato's  own 
day.  And  the  results  obtained  are  of  a  double 
nature.  The  first  four  of  the  hypotheses  discover 
the  embarrassment  into  which  those  of  the  Meg- 
arian  school  were  driven  who,  in  fanatical  oppo- 
sition to  Platonic  Ideas  and  the  Heraclitean  flux, 
ran  to  an  uncompromising  idealism  of  the  One, 
as  the  exclusive  reality.  I  do  not  believe  that 
Plato  meant  to  direct  his  argument  against  the 
Parmenidean  unity  itself  (cf.  128a)  ;  that  unity, 
as  the  Idea  of  the  Good,  was  so  deeply  imbedded 
in  his  own  teleological  philosophy  that  it  is  im- 
possible to  think  of  him  as  trying  to  eradicate  it. 
Rather,  his  aim  must  have  been  to  tear  away 
from  this  unity  the  scaffolding  which  had  been 
raised  about  it  by  the  later  Eleatics  and  Meg- 
arians,  and  so  to  leave  it  in  the  form  of  an  ob- 
scure intuition,  such  as  it  appeared  to  Parme- 
nides  himself,  untouched  by  the  rationalism 
which  would  petrify  it  into  a  logical  negation  of 
experience.  Even  so,  it  is  notable  that  Plato 
treats  this  error  with  a  certain  respect;  at  least 
his  exposition  is  conducted  without  any  admix- 
ture of  that  contemptuous  buffoonery  which  he 
had  employed  in  the  Euthydemus,  when  "dust- 
ing the  jackets"  of  the  two  shameless  Protago- 
reans.  He  was  himself  a  spiritual  child  of  the 
ancient  sage,  and  thought  it  almost  an  act  of 


METAPHYSICS  265 

parricide  to  lay  hands  on  "father  Parmenides."  ^taiT 
In  this  way  we  can  understand  the  propriety  of 
making  Parmenides  the  instrument  of  attack  on 
his  Megarian  successors. 

But  this  freeing  of  the  Parmenidean  unity 
from  its  eristical  supergrowth  was  by  the  way, 
so  to  speak;  the  main  intention  was  to  bring  re- 
lief to  Plato's  own  doctrine  of  Ideas.  At  the 
conclusion  of  the  first  part  of  the  Dialogue  we 
found  ourselves  confronted  by  this  dilemma :  one 
by  one  the  arguments  set  up  to  explain  the  rela- 
tion between  Ideas  and  phenomena  had  been 
knocked  down,  yet  it  was  declared  impossible  to 
surrender  Ideas.  The  situation  was  very  much 
like  that  taken  by  Dr.  Johnson  (the  great  So- 
cratic  of  the  modem  world)  in  regard  to  a  ques- 
tion of  equal  ethical  importance :  "All  theory  is 
against  the  freedom  of  the  will,  all  experience 
for  it."  By  demonstrating  that  the  eristical 
method  led  to  the  same  absurdity  (and  so  de- 
stroyed itself)  whether  we  posited  the  One  as 
existing  or  as  not  existing,  Parmenides  would 
intimate  to  his  young  friend  that  to  guard  him- 
self against  a  rationalism  which  brought  out  the 
contradictions  involved  in  positing  the  existence 
of  Ideas  he  should  have  retorted  by  forcing  his 
antagonist  to  admit  the  contradictions  involved 
in  positing  the  non-existence  of  Ideas.  Thus  he 
would  have  made  himself  free  to  accept  the  re- 
ality of  Ideas  as  a  necessity  of  inner  experience, 


266  PLATONISM 

just  as  he  had  seen  that  the  eristic  of  Zeno  and 
the  Herachteans  left  him  free  to  accept  the  re- 
ahty  of  phenomena  as  known  to  perception. 

This  interpretation  of  the  Parmenides,  I  sub- 
mit, avoids  the  violences  to  the  text  to  which  other 
interpretations  are  bound  to  have  recourse.  It 
justifies  the  choice  of  speakers,  and  does  away 
with  the  arbitrary  assumption  of  a  radical  break 
in  Plato's  philosophy.  It  has  also  the  advantage 
of  finding  a  single  purpose  running  through  the 
two  parts  of  the  discussion,  and  of  establishing 
an  integral  relation  between  this  Dialogue  and 
the  others  in  which  Plato  turned  his  attention 
from  the  sophistry  of  rhetoric  to  the  sophistry  of 
metaphysic. 

If  any  further  confirmation  of  this  thesis  is 
needed,  it  may  be  found  in  the  natural  interpre- 
tation of  a  much-disputed  passage  of  the  Dia- 
logue which  is  commonly,  and  rightly,  I  think, 
regarded  as  supplementary  to  the  Parmenides. 
In  the  central  part  of  the  Sophist  Plato  considers 
242c  s  in  turn  three  classes  of  philosophers.    First,  by 
an  argument  essentially  the  same  as  that  em- 
ployed in  the  Parmenides,  he  reduces  the  Eleat- 
*       ics  and  Megarians  to  confusion.    He  next  deals 
with  the  opposite  school,  not  the  mere  Heracli- 
teans  in  this  case,  but  the  gross  materialists  who 
cling  to  brute  sensations  and  wage  war  upon  the 
246a  idealists  of  all  colours,  a  veritable  gigantomachia. 
These,  or  their  kindred  at  least,  he  had  already 


METAPHYSICS  267 

made  the  subject  of  biting  ridicule;  now  he  is 
content  with  what  is  really  little  more  than  a 
reference  to  the  proofs  he  has  elsewhere  given  at 
length.  He  argues  briefly  that  there  is  a  soul, 
or  life-giving  principle  in  us;  that  there  is  a  dif-  2473 
ference  between  the  just  and  the  unjust  soul;  that 
this  difference  is  due  to  the  possession  and  pres- 
ence of  justice  or  its  contrary  in  the  soul,  and 
that,  therefore,  justice  itself  exists  as  an  invisible, 
impalpable  entity — that  is  to  say  as  an  Idea. 
After  dismissing  these  two  opposed  sects,  he 
turns  to  the  "friends  of  Ideas" ;  and  here  the  in-  248a 
terpreters  run  amuck.  Campbell,  in  his  note, 
thus  states  the  various  positions  held : 

"Four  possible  suppositions  remain,  if  we  be- 
lieve the  dialogues  to  be  the  work  of  Plato.  The 
'friends  of  forms'  are  either  (1)  Megarians 
(since  Schleiermacher  this  has  been  the  most 
general  impression) ;  or  (2)  Plato  himself  at  an 
earlier  stage;  or  (3)  Platonists  who  have  im- 
perfectly understood  Plato.  The  fourth  hy- 
pothesis combines  (2)  and  (8)." 

Now,  in  the  name  of  conscience,  why  should 
not  an  unsophisticated  reader  take  these  friends 
of  forms,  or  Ideas,  to  be  just  Plato  and  his  true 
followers,  without  any  beating  about  the  bush?** 

^"  Some  colour  may  be  lent  to  Campbell's  third  supposi- 
tion by  the  words  of  248c  (tt/jos  St;  touto  k.  t.  A.).  They 
may,  in  fact,  point  to  the  overzealousness  of  Platonists  (or 
of  Plato  himself  in  his  unguarded  moments)  who  held  the 
definition  of  Ideas  too  rigidly;  but  the  statement  of  248a 


268  PLATONISM 

In  the  first  place,  as  we  have  seen  above,  Plato, 
in  his  contention  against  the  materialists,  assumes 
the  existence  of  Ideas  in  precisely  the  manner^' 
of  his  early  Dialogues.  The  Sophist,  therefore, 
can  scarcely  contain  a  rejection  of  Ideas,  or  any 
radical  change  in  the  way  of  regarding  them. 
What  follows?  Plato  subjects  these  idealists  to 
the  antinomies  of  reason,  thus  (I  borrow  Camp- 
bell's own  summary) : 

"Perfect  Being  [the  realm  of  Ideas]  cannot  be 
in  a  state  of  mere  negative  repose,  a  sacred  form 
without  thought,  or  life,  or  soul,  or  motion.  .  .  . 
But  on  the  other  hand,  thought  is  equally  impos- 
sible without  a  principle  of  permanence  and  rest. 
Hence  the  philosopher,  with  whom  thought  is  the 
highest  being,  can  listen  wholly  neither  to  the  ad- 
vocates of  rest  nor  of  motion,  but  must  say  with 
the  children,  that  'both  are  best,'  when  he  is 
defining  the  nature  of  Being." 

We  have,  then,  in  this  section  of  the  Sophist 
an  exact  repetition  in  brief  of  the  method  em- 
ployed in  the  second  part  of  the  Parmenides,  ap- 
plied now  directly  to  the  doctrine  of  Ideas.  And 
observe  that  the  conclusion  is  in  no  sense  of  the 
word  a  "reconciliation"  of  rest  and  motion,  the 
One  and  the  Many,  nor  is  it  in  any  sense  a  de- 

(koi  awfioTi  K.  T.  A.)  is  so  perfectly  in  accord  with  Plato's 
position  in  the  Timaeus  and  elsewhere  as  to  leave  room  for 
no  doubts  of  the  nature  of  these  "friends  of  Ideas."  It  is 
to  be  noted  that  the  exposition  of  the  theory  comes  from 
the  mouth  of  an  Eleatic. 
"  "E^ci  jcai  vapavaia. 


METAPHYSICS  269 

termination  of  the  relationship  of  Ideas  to  phe- 
nomena, but  a  categorical  statement  that  Ideas 
are  and  that  in  some  unknown  way  they  show  the 
effects  of  their  power  in  the  realm  of  multiplicity 
and  change/*  The  destruction  of  eristic  and 
metaphysical  assumption  by  means  of  an  unwav- 
ering affirmation  of  the  reality  of  moral  Ideas, 
united  with  an  unwavering  scepticism,  is  Plato's 
philosophical  justification  of  his  master's  life  and 
faith. 

But  candour  forbids  us  to  stop  here.  Though 
this  is  the  significant  outcome  of  Plato's  later 
thought,  it  is  clear  that,  for  a  while  at  least,  he 
was  haunted  by  the  hope  of  attaining  to  some 
discursive  proof  of  those  Ideas  the  existence  of 
which  could  only  not  be  disproved  by  the  false 
methods  of  eristic,  and  to  some  rational  explana- 
tion of  the  inherence  of  these  Ideas  in  phe- 
nomena. There  are  tentative  efforts  to  create 
this  positive  metaphysic  in  the  Sophist  and  the 
Philehus,  but  it  should  appear  that  the  full  work- 
ing out  of  the  plan  was  left  for  the  projected 
Dialogue  on  the  Philosopher.  The  absence  of  sophist  2S3c 
that  work  from  the  Platonic  canon  means,  I  con- 
jecture, simply  this,  that  Plato  became  aware  of 
his  inability  to  achieve  what,  indeed,  no  philo- 
sopher has  ever  achieved;  since  it  lies  beyond  the 
scope  of  human  reason. 

*'The  key  note  to  the  Sophist  is  struck  in  the  word 
BtrproprjfMvov  (250e),  "we  have  seen  the  difficulties  through 
to  Uie  end." 


Republic  486a 


CHAPTER  IX 


CONCLUSION 


Granted  that  Platonism  has  been  expounded 
correctly  in  the  foregoing  chapters,  the  question 
remains — a  very  grave  question — whether  its  in- 
fluence has  been  on  the  whole  for  good  or  for  evil. 
The  extent  of  this  influence  no  one,  I  think,  will 
deny.  As  a  dominant  factor  in  the  formation  of 
the  Christian  religion  it  has  helped  to  mould  the 
civilization  of  the  western  world,  and  as  a  philo- 
sophy in  its  own  right  it  has  been  the  inspiration 
of  innumerable  poets  and  prophets  who  have 
called  upon  men  to  rise  above  ephemeral  interests 
to  the  contemplation  of  all  time  and  all  being. 
In  a  manner  not  given  to  any  other  writer  Plato 
must  be  regarded  as  the  liberator  of  the  spirit, 
who  has  set  wings  to  the  human  soul  and  sent  it 
voyaging  through  the  empyrean.  But  in  that 
flight  how  many  have  mounted  too  near  the  sun, 
and  fallen  to  earth  in  ruinous  combustion !  How 
many  others  have  forever  lost  their  way  in  those 
thin  heights  I  Alas,  for  the  weakness  of  mankind, 
and  their  "blind  hopes"!  It  is  a  fact,  sad  and  in- 
disputable, that  no  one  is  more  likely  to  call  him- 
self, or  to  be  called  by  his  admirers,  a  Platonist 

270 


CONCLUSION  271 

than  the  reformer  with  a  futile  scheme  for  the 
regeneration  of  the  world,  or  the  dreamer  who 
has  spurned  the  realities  of  human  nature  for 
some  illusion  of  easy  perfection,  or  the  romantic 
visionary  who  has  set  the  spontaneity  of  fancy 
above  the  rational  imagination,  or  the  "fair  soul" 
who  has  withdrawn  from  the  conflict  of  life  into 
the  indulgence  of  a  morbid  introspection,  or  the 
votary  of  faith  as  a  law  abrogating  the  sterner 
law  of  works  and  retribution.  Half  the  enthusi- 
asts and  inspired  maniacs  of  society  have  shielded 
themselves  under  the  aegis  of  the  great  Athenian. 
Not  to  mention  the  detected  mountebanks,  the 
list  is  replete  with  the  names  of  accepted  sages 
whose  wisdom,  if  brought  to  the  test,  would  prove 
to  be  only  a  finer  form  of  spiritual  flattery. 

If  these  are  the  only  products  of  Platonism, 
then  it  is  a  pity  the  works  of  Plato  were  not  lost 
altogether,  with  the  books  of  so  many  other  an- 
cient philosophers,  and  we  who  busy  ourselves 
with  interpreting  the  Dialogues  are  merely  add- 
ing to  the  sum  of  the  world's  folly.  But  it  is 
not  so.  It  is  with  Platonism  as  with  Christianity 
and  every  other  strong  excitement  of  the  human 
heart.  Liberty  is  the  noblest  and  at  the  same 
time  the  most  perilous  possession  that  can  be 
given  to  mankind;  and,  unless  we  are  prepared 
to  silence  the  higher  call  of  religion  and  philo- 
sophy altogether  for  the  safer  demands  of  a  pure- 
ly practical  wisdom,  we  must  expect,  while  we  try 


272  PLATONISM 

to  expose,  these  vagaries  of  minds  made  drunk 
with  excess  of  enthusiasm.  No,  we  dare  not  re- 
pudiate Platonism  for  the  dangers  that  surround 
it;  but  it  is  well  that  we  should  be  put  on  our 
guard  against  Platonists,  remembering  the  ad- 
monition of  St.  John  to  the  disciples  of  Christ: 
"Believe  not  every  spirit,  but  try  the  spirits 
whether  they  are  of  God,  because  many  false 
prophets  are  gone  out  into  the  world." 

We  have  already  had  occasion  to  distinguish 
between  the  true  and  the  false  Platonist  in  the 
realms  of  art  and  science;  but  there  is  need  of  a 
single  general  criterion  which  can  be  applied  to 
every  pretender  to  the  name,  and  such  a  criterion, 
happily,  is  not  far  to  seek.  Both  the  true  and 
the  false  Platonist  appear  with  the  promise  of 
regeneration  in  their  hands,  stimulating  the  im- 
agination to  roam  in  unbounded  and  unfamiliar 
fields,  loosing  the  soul  from  the  prison-house  of 
convention,  pointing  to  a  prize  beyond  the  re- 
wards of  commonplace  prudence.  But  there  is 
this  certain  difference  between  them.  To  the 
true  Platonist  the  divine  spirit,  though  it  may  be 
called,  and  is,  the  hidden  source  of  beauty  and 
order  and  joy,  yet  always,  when^t  speaks  di- 
rectly in  the  human  breast,  makes  itself  heard  as 
an  inhibition;  like  the  guide  of  Socrates,  it  never 
in  its  own  proper  voice  commands  to  do,  but  only 
to  refrain.  Whereas  to  the  pseudo-Platonist  it 
appears  as  a  positive  inspiration,  saying  yes  to 


CONCLUSION  «73 

his  desires  and  emotions.  Goethe  unwittingly 
was  giving  expression  to  the  everlasting  formula 
of  pseudo-Platonism  when  he  put  into  the  mouth 
of  Mephistopheles  the  fateful  words :  "I  am  the 
spirit  that  ever  denies."  It  is  God  that  denies, 
not  Satan.  The  moment  these  terms  are  re- 
versed, what  is  reverenced  as  the  spirit  becomes  a 
snare  instead  of  a  monitor:  liberty  is  turned  into 
license,  a  glamour  of  sanctity  is  thrown  over  the 
desires  of  the  heart,  the  humility  of  doubt  goes 
out  of  the  mind,  the  will  to  follow  this  or  that  im- 
pulsion is  invested  with  divine  authority,  there  is 
an  utter  confusion  of  the  higher  and  the  lower 
elements  of  our  nature. 

This  longing  for  the  assurance  of  faith  without 
the  humbling  bondage  of  scepticism  extends,  of 
course,  far  beyond  the  sphere  of  pseudo-Platon- 
ism, and  has  been  the  ever-present  temptation  of 
those  strong  men,  of  whatever  professed  creed, 
who  have  laid  violent  hands  on  religion  and  philo- 
sophy. Here  is  the  origin  of  those  enthusiasms 
and  extravagances  of  inner  freedom  which  are 
constantly  rising  to  trouble  the  world  by  making 
an  unholy  divorce  between  supposed  inspiration 
and  common  sense,  sometimes  between  supposed 
inspiration  and  common  morality.  The  mani- 
festations of  fanaticism  may  be  various,  in  ac- 
cordance with  the  disposition  of  the  man  or 
group  of  men  upon  whom  the  temptation  falls, 
but  the  ultimate  cause  is  always  the  same:  it  is 


274  PLATONISM 

the  lust  of  the  heart  to  identify  our  personal  in- 
clinations with  the  voice  of  God  or  with  some  di- 
vine authority.  In  religion  this  spirit  is  seen  at 
work  in  the  pride  of  the  ascetic — "the  hair  shirt, 
the  watchings,  the  midnight  prayers,  the  obmut- 
escence,  the  gloom  and  mortification  of  religious 
orders,  and  of  those  who  aspired  to  religious  per- 
fection," as  Paley  says.^  For  the  ascetic  is 
simply  the  man  who  translates  the  inhibitions  of 
the  spirit  into  a  positive  law  of  physical  discom- 
fort. From  the  same  source  came  the  lust  of 
persecution  into  the  Catholic  church,  leading  a 
man  like  Torquemada  to  believe  that  his  passion 
for  dominance  was  the  divine  will ;  and  the  equal 
intolerance  and  inhumanity  of  the  Puritans,  who, 
as  was  charged  by  the  writer  of  a  tract  in  1676, 
held  that  "the  Holy  Spirit  directs  and  persuades 
men  what  to  believe  and  do  [note  the  affirmation] 
by  his  immediate  working."  It  was  not  without 
reason  that  South  could  say  they  fetched  "a  war- 
rant for  all  their  villainies  from  ecstasy  and  in- 
spiration." There  was  needed  the  whole  revul- 
sion of  the  eighteenth  century  to  "cast  enthusiasm 
out  of  divinity,"  to  use  Bishop  Sprat's  strong 
phrase — the  pity  being  that  so  much  of  the  true 
inspiration  had  to  be  ejected  with  the  false. 
Turn  again  to  Paley,  the  apostle  of  common 
sense  in  religion,  if  not  of  common  sense  at  the 
expense  of  religion,  and  hear  his  measured  rebuke 

*  Evidences  II,  ii,  2. 


CONCLUSION  276 

of  the  wild  language  of  the  sectarian  who  cher- 
ishes the  emotions  attendant  upon  so-called  "con- 
version" and  "rebirth"  as  evidences  of  sanctifica- 
tion:  "Our  Saviour  uttered  no  impassioned  de- 
votion. There  was  no  heat  in  his  piety,  or  in  the 
language  in  which  he  expressed  it;  no  vehement 
or  rapturous  ejaculations,  no  violent  urgency,  in 
his  prayers.  ...  I  feel  a  respect  for  Methodists, 
because  I  believe  that  there  is  to  be  found 
amongst  them  much  sincere  piety,  and  availing, 
though  not  always  well-informed,  Christianity: 
yet  I  never  attended  a  meeting  of  theirs,  but  I 
came  away  with  the  reflection,  how  different  what 
I  heard  was  from  what  I  read !  I  do  not  mean  in 
doctrine,  with  which  at  present  I  have  no  con- 
cern, but  in  manner;  how  different  from  the  calm- 
ness, the  sobriety,  the  good  sense,  and  I  may  add, 
the  strength  and  authority,  of  our  Lord's  dis- 
courses!"* 

Nor  has  the  evil  been  less  marked  in  philo- 
sophy than  in  religion,  as  he  who  writes  in  this 
time  of  universal  war  can  testify  with  sad  con- 
viction. There  is  a  saying  of  Kant's  which  is 
much  quoted:  "Act  on  a  maxim  which  thou 
canst  will  to  be  law  universal" ;  it  is  the  formula 
of  his  so-called  categorical  imperative.  Well,  no 
one  would  hold  Kant  directly  responsible  for  the 
calamity  to  civilization  wrought  by  the  European 
War;  the  causes  are  manifold  and  complicated. 

*Ibid.  II,  U,  a. 


276  PLATONISM 

Yet,  after  all,  what  is  the  ambition  of  Kant's 
people  but  this  maxim  in  actual  operation?  For 
the  moment  you  identify  the  moral  sense  with 
the  human  willy  as  Kant  did,  and  bestow  upon 
this  will  a  certainty  and  authority  above  the  ne- 
gations of  pure  reason,  you  are  in  imminent 
danger,  however  you  may  hedge  yourself  about 
with  precautions,  of  confounding  your  law  uni- 
versal with  the  libido  dominandi  and  of  seeing  in 
the  categorical  imperative  an  excuse  for  forcing 
your  own  sense  of  right  upon  reluctant  mankind. 
One  cannot  follow  the  course  of  German  thought 
from  Luther  through  Kant  and  Fichte  and 
Hegel,  through  Mommsen  and  Treitschke  and 
others  who  have  justified  the  aggression  of  their 
national  statecraft,  without  a  growing  conviction 
that  the  boasted  idealism  of  the  Teutonic  mind, 
if  not  of  the  Northern  mind  generally,  has  been 
vitiated  from  the  first  by  an  inability  to  hold  the 
will  to  refrain  (if  we  may  so  name  the  daemonic 
check  without  ourselves  suffering  the  ambiguous 
consequences  of  the  word  "will")  distinct  from 
the  will  to  power.* 

'  Paulsen,  in  his  famous  commentary,  is  continually  allud- 
ing to  the  "Platonism"  of  Kant,  yet  unwittingly,  in  passage 
after  passage,  shows  how  far  Kant's  rationalistic  (and  ut- 
terly inconsistent)  dualism  is  from  the  ethical  dualism  of 
Plato,  and  how  easily  it  slips  into  a  dogmatism  of  the  will. 
"With  immediate  certainty,"  he  says,  "we  affirm  moral  good 
as  the  real  purpose  of  life.  We  do  this,  not  by  means  of 
the  understanding  or  scientific  thinking,  but  through  the 
will,  or,  as  Kant  says,  the  practical  reason.     In  the  fact 


CONCLUSION  «77 

These  are  examples  of  the  evil  that  fastens 
upon  the  better  part  of  the  soul  whenever  men 
are  tempted  to  identify  spirituality  with  their 
positive  wlQ.  The  danger  of  the  seduction, 
whether  for  religion  or  philosophy^  was  pointed 
out  by  Hooker  clearly  enough  in  his  contention 
with  the  Puritanic  temper  of  his  day.  "For  my 
purpose  herein  is  to  show,"  he  said,  "that,  when 
the  minds  of  men  are  once  erroneously  persuaded 
that  it  is  the  will  of  God  to  have  those  things 
done  which  they  fancy,  their  opinions  are  as 
thorns  in  their  sides,  never  suffering  them  to  take 
rest  till  they  have  brought  their  speculations  into 
practice.  The  lets  and  impediments  of  which 
practice  their  restless  desire  and  study  to  remove 
leadeth  them  every  day  forth  by  the  hand  into 
other  more  dangerous  opinions,  sometimes  quite 
and  clean  contrary  to  their  first  pretended  mean- 
that  the  will,  which  alone  judges  things  as  'good'  or  'bad,' 
determines  morality  as  that  which  has  absolute  worth,  we 
have  the  point  of  departure  for  the  interpretation  of  life." 
The  result  of  this  he  states  elsewhere:  "Perhaps  we  may 
say  that  there  is  an  inner  relationship  between  Kant's 
ethics  and  the  Prussian  nature.  The  conception  of  life  as 
service,  a  disposition  to  order  everything  according  to  rule, 
a  certain  disbelief  in  human  nature,  and  a  kind  of  lack  of 
the  natural  fulness  of  life,  are  traits  common  to  both.  It  is  a 
highly  estimable  type  of  human  character  which  here  meets 
us,  but  not  a  lovable  one.  It  has  something  cold  and  severe 
about  it  that  might  well  degenerate  into  external  p>erform- 
ance  of  duty,  and  hard  doctrinaire  morality."  (Immanuel 
Kant,  by  Friedrich  Paulsen,  translated  by  J.  E.  Creighton 
and  Albert  Lefevre,  pp.  5  and  54.) 


278  PLATONISM 

ings:  so  as  what  will  grow  out  of  such  errors  as 
go  masked  under  the  cloak  of  divine  authority, 
impossible  it  is  that  ever  the  wit  of  man  should 
imagine,  till  time  have  brought  forth  the  fruits  of 
them :  for  which  cause  it  behoveth  wisdom  to  fear 
the  sequels  thereof,  even  beyond  all  apparent 
cause  of  fear."*  But  long  before  Hooker's  day 
the  matter  was  set  right  by  Plato,  once  for  all,  in 
the  conversation  between  Socrates  and  Euthy- 
phro,  the  prof oundest  and  most  beautiful,  I  some- 
times think,  as  well  as  the  most  perfectly  Socratic 
of  the  Dialogues.  There  the  fanaticism  of  a 
young  man  who  has  no  hesitation  in  holding  his 
own  extravagant  notion  of  holy  procedure  as 
identical  with  the  absolute  law  of  holiness  is  con- 
trasted with  the  ironical  modesty  of  Socrates, 
now  an  old  man  full  of  experience,  who,  never 
doubting  the  reality  of  the  Idea  of  holiness  as  an 
eternal  peremptory  fact,  yet  knows  that  the 
transference  of  the  Idea  into  the  region  of  spe- 
cific action  can  be  only  tentative  and  subject  to 
correction.  Those  who  have  understood  the 
Euthyphro  need  read  no  further  to  learn  the  true 
relation  between  the  spiritual  affirmation  of  So- 
crates and  Plato  and  their  scepticism. 

Fanaticism,  as  I  have  said,  is  rather  contrary 
to  Platonism  than  pseudo-Platonic,  and  is  by  no 
means  confined  to  those  who  pretend  to  be  fol- 
lowers of  the  Academy.    The  perversion  of  those 

*  Ecclesiastical  Polity,  Preface,  viii,  2. 


CONCLUSION  «79 

who  falsely  assume  Plato's  name  more  commonly 
takes  the  guise  of  an  idealism  in  which  the  softer 
emotions  of  the  soul  masquerade  as  the  spirit.  In 
this  form  pseudo-Platonism  is  almost  synony- 
mous with  the  romantic  movement  which  has 
carried  and  still  carries  with  it  so  many  of  the 
finer  minds  of  the  age.  For  us  romanticism  seems 
to  have  begun  with  the  revolt  from  the  narrow  re- 
strictions of  neo-classical  authority  in  the  eight- 
eenth century,  but  its  roots  really  go  back  to  the 
theosophic  speculations  of  Alexandria.  There 
its  chief  exponent  was  Plotinus,  who  took  up  the 
ancient  metaphysical  error  of  Parmenides,  and 
sought  to  re-establish  the  doctrine  of  an  all- 
embracing  unity  in  place  of  the  irrational  dualism 
of  the  master  in  whose  name  he  pretended  to 
teach.  From  this  unity — to  summarize  the  per- 
plexed inconsistencies  of  Neoplatonism  in  the 
briefest  terms — the  creation  of  the  world  was 
supposed  to  proceed  by  a  series  of  emanations, 
through  intelligence  and  soul,  down  to  body,  or 
material  "necessity,"  which,  as  the  last  and  re- 
motest offshoot  of  the  divine,  was  converted 
somehow,  in  a  manner  never  cleared  by  Plotinus 
of  the  obscurity  inherent  in  any  monistic  system, 
into  the  cause  of  evil.  This  "necessity"  of  the 
Plotinian  metaphysic  may  seem  to  have  some  re- 
semblance to  Plato's  substratum  of  the  same 
name,  but  the  difference  is  really  fundamental. 
With  Plotinus  the  final  "necessity"  is  not  so 


«80  PLATONISM 

much  an  independent  inexplicable  force,  of  which 
the  divine  government  is  a  negation,  as  it  is  a 
vaguely  conceived  distance  from  the  divine,  a 
"deprivation"  (steresis),  so  to  speak.  Though  at 
times  Plotinus  falls  into  the  common  language  of 
the  Stoics  and  sees  a  shadowy  sort  of  evil  in  the 
existence  of  individual  souls  as  a  breaking  up  of 
the  supreme  imity,  at  other  times  he  admits  a  view 
of  the  world  which  virtually  juggles  evil  out  of  it 
altogether.  "God  made  me,"  he  says,  speaking 
for  the  universe,  "and  I  am  come  from  him,  per- 
fectly fashioned  out  of  all  living  beings,  sufficing 
and  sufficient  unto  myself,  in  want  of  nothing." 
In  such  a  scheme  the  individual  acts  in  accord- 
ance with  the  necessity  of  his  nature;  "each  man 
also  does  what  comes  natural  to  him,  and  differ- 
ent men  do  different  things."  Plotinus  was  not 
unaware  of  the  deductions  that  would  be  drawn 
from  such  a  doctrine:  "By  saying  that  there  is 
no  evil  at  all  in  the  universe,  we  perforce  do 
away  with  the  good  as  well,  and  deny  that  there 
is  any  desirable  end  to  be  attained."  In  such  a 
conclusion  of  nihilism  Plotinus  was  unwilling  to 
rest,  and  he  twists  and  struggles  to  escape  the 
net  of  his  own  logic ;  but  if  he  escapes  at  all,  it  is 
only  into  a  kind  of  etherialized  naturalism.  Let 
us  grant  that  the  great  Neoplatonist  was  filled 
with  cravings  for  truth;  his  doctrine  of  emana- 
tion and  necessity  and  steresis,  none  the  less,  by 
weakening  the  sense  of  evil  as  a  positive  force, 


CONCLUSION  281 

and  by  identifying  salvation  with  a  surrender  of 
the  soul  to  vague  yearnings  for  completion,  is 
one  of  the  sources  of  the  endless  stream  of 
pseudo-Platonism.'^ 

First  in  the  hst  of  the  modem  pseudo-proph- 
ets, the  father  of  all  the  brood,  is  Rousseau,  who, 
in  the  words  of  his  latest  expositor,  "with  modi- 
fications due  to  the  influence  of  Montesquieu," 
remained  "essentially  a  Platonist  to  the  end."* 
Now,  to  discover  the  essential  creed  of  Rousseau 
one  need  not  look  far.  It  is  stated  explicitly  in 
a  famous  passage  of  the  Nouvelle  Helo'ise :  "Only 
the  souls  of  fire  know  how  to  combat  and  con- 
quer; all  the  great  achievements,  all  the  sublime 
actions,  are  their  work ;  cold  reason  never  has  ac- 
complished anything  illustrious,  and  we  triimiph 
over  our  passions  only  by  opposing  one  to  an- 
other. When  the  passion  of  virtue  arises  in  the 
soul,  it  dominates  alone  and  holds  all  in  equihb- 
rium."  There  is,  no  doubt,  a  half-truth  in  such 
words,  as  there  is  in  all  pseudo-Platonism. 
Without  the  heart,  without  deep  feeling  and 
strong  desires,  it  is  true  that  no  great  work  is 
achieved  whether  for  good  or  for  evil ;  that  is  the 

'  The  quotations  here  used  are  taken  from  The  Problem 
of  Evil  in  Plotinus,  by  B.  A.  G.  Fuller.  To  that  study  I 
would  refer  those  who  desire  to  look  more  thoroughly  into  a 
subject  of  great  moment  which  I  have  been  obliged  to  treat 
in  the  most  summary  fashion. 

'  C.  £.  Vaughan,  The  Political  Writingt  of  Jean  Jacques 
Rousseau  I,  296. 


282  .      PLATONISM 

49iA  ff  express  doctrine  of  The  Republic.  But  to  look 
for  balance  in  the  mere  opposition  of  passion  to 
passion,  to  make  morality  only  one  passion 
among  many,  is  to  preach  a  ruinous  perversion 
of  Platonism.  "As  for  Julie,"  Rousseau  says, 
"who  had  no  rule  but  her  heart,  and  knew  no 
other  more  sure,  she  abandoned  herself  to  it 
without  scruple,  and  to  do  well  needed  only  to 
do  what  it  demanded  of  her."  The  philosophy 
of  abandonment  is  not  Plato's.  It  may  be  that 
of  Goethe,  the  romantic,  who,  having  made 
Mephistopheles  the  spirit  of  denial,  could  put  no 
better  word  for  God  into  the  mouth  of  Faust  than 
feeling  {Gefilhl),  and  could  discover  no  better 
use  for  that  feeling  than  the  seduction  of  an  in- 
nocent girl. 

In  England  we  shall  find  another  leader  of 
romanticism  who  is  revered  by  many  today  as  a 
Platonist  and  as  an  emancipator  of  the  human 
spirit.  The  message  of  Blake  is  elusively  ut- 
tered, but  simple  enough  in  itself.  It  is  fairly 
well  summed  up  in  his  two  mythical  personifica- 
tions of  good  and  evil,  "Emanation"  and  the 
"Spectre,"  who  play  their  parts  in  Milton  and 
other  of  his  Prophetic  Books.  What  little  Blake 
knew  of  the  Alexandrian  philosophers  came  to 
him  at  second  hand  from  Jacob  Boehme,  but  his 
principle  of  goodness  is  clearly  nothing  more 
than  a  personification  of  that  instinct  of  self-ex- 
pansion in  the  superessential  One  which  Plotinus 


CONCLUSION 

made  the  cause  of  the  unfolding  universe.  The 
Emanations,  according  to  Blake,  come  forth  "like 
Females  of  sweet  beauty" ;  they  are  the  power  of 
the  imagination,  the  perfect  spontaneity  of  de- 
sire, the  innocence  of  unquestioning  impulse. 
Against  them  in  each  man  is  set  his  evil  Spectre, 
which  is  nothing  else  but  the  man's  own  shadow 
regarded  as  the  questioning,  limiting,  restrain- 
ing reason: 

"They  take  the  Two  Contraries  which 
are  call'd  Qualities,  with  which 

Every  substance  is  clothed;  they  name 
them  Good  and  Evil. 

From  them  they  make  an  Abstract, 
which  is  a  Negation 

Not  only  of  the  Substance  from  which 
it  is  derived, 

A  murderer  of  its  own  Body,  but  also  a 
murderer 

Of  every  Divine  Member.  It  is  the 
Reasoning  Power, 

An  Abstract  objecting  power,  that  neg- 
atives everything. 

This  is  the  Spectre  of  Man,  the  Holy 
Reasoning  Power, 

And  in  its  Holiness  is  closed  the  Abomi- 
nation of  Desolation  I"^ 

There  could  not  be  a  more  extraordinary 
amalgamation  of  abstract  reason  as  a  process  of 
cold  logic,  such  as  it  had  become  in  the  school  of 

^Jerusalem  f.  10,  11.  8-16. 


284  PLATONISM 

the  rationalists  and  pseudo-classicists,  with 
reason  as  the  spiritual  inhibition  which  Socrates 
worshipped  in  the  daemonic  check;  and  both 
forms  of  reason  Blake  rejects  as  the  spectral 
abomination.  "Jesus,"  he  declares,  "was  all  vir- 
tue, and  acted  from  impulse  not  from  rules." 

Those  who  care  to  see  the  mythology  of  Blake 
developed  in  splendid  imagery  and  chains  of 
long-drawn  sophistry  may  take  up  the  works  of 
Shelley,  the  purest  of  the  Enghsh  romantics — a 
Platonist  also,  as  most  of  his  admirers  will  have 
him.  "Under  forms  of  thought  derived  from  the 
atheist  and  materiahst  Godwin,"  we  read  in  one 
of  the  best  infonned  of  living  British  critics, 
"Shelley  has  given,  in  Prometheus  Unbound, 
magnificent  expression  to  the  faith  of  Plato  and 
of  Christ."'— The  faith  of  Plato  and  of  Christ! 
Shall  I  confess  that  to  meet  with  such  words  in 
such  a  place  is  to  be  overborne  with  the  futihty 
of  writing  at  all.  What  shall  a  Platonist  say? 
what  shall  he  not  say?  The  most  casual  student 
ought  to  perceive  that  the  ethosf  of  Shelley's 
drama,  through  its  superficial  paraphernalia  of 
classic  and  Platonic  borrowings,  is  antipodal  to 
true  classicism  and  Platonism.  If  words  mean 
anything  the  poem  breathes  the  spirit  of  rebellion 
against  the  idea  of  the  divine  as  a  restricting,  in- 
hibiting power,  and  is  animated  by  the  dream  of 

'C.  H.  Herford,  Cambridge  Hiatory  of  English  Litera- 
ture XII,  74. 


CONCLUSION  «86 

deifying  the  emancipated  emotions  in  its  place. 
Here,  if  anywhere,  the  voice  that  denies  is  evil: 

"Music  is  in  the  sea  and  air, 
Winged  clouds  soar  here  and  there, 
Dark  with  the  rain  new  buds  are  dreaming  of: 
'T  is  love,  all  love!" 

(Love,  the  unconvinced  reader  must  add,  which 
does  not  exclude  hatred  and  bitter  intolerance 
of  those  who  have  worshipped  a  different  God.) 

These  pseudo-Platonists  you  shall  know,  then, 
by  a  single  test:  they  all  grasp  at  the  imaginative 
and  emotional  elements  of  Platonism,  but  forget 
that  the  spiritual  affirmation  speaks  from  a  dark 
recess  of  the  soul  (dark,  Plato  would  say,  from 
excess  of  light),  in  which  no  image  of  mortal 
likeness  is  seen,  and  into  which  no  positive  motive 
can  enter.  And  so  you  shall  find  them  substi- 
tuting untrammelled  spontaneity  for  centrahzed 
control,  endless  expansiveness  for  obedience  to 
the  inner  check,  and  an  exaggerated  sense  of 
personal  importance  for  the  impersonality  of  the 
spirit.  They  are  the  sons  of  Plotinus  and  citizens 
of  Alexandria. 

But  if  the  last  word  of  Platonism  viewed  from 
the  personal  side  of  reason  and  concupiscence,  as 
the  last  word  of  all  genuine  spirituahty,  is  a 
negation,  we  are  not,  therefore,  to  suppose  that 
it  signifies  or  commands  an  impoverishment  of 
our  human  existence.  The  very  contrary  of  that 
is  true.    I  would  not  deny  that  the  dualism  of 


1t86  PLATONISM 

body  and  soul,  which  Plato  apparently  took  over 
from  the  old  Orphic  mysteries,  led  him  at  times 
to  magnify  a  pure  asceticism,  and  it  is  easy  to 
see  why  this  aspect  of  his  teaching  exercised  a 
disproportionate  influence  in  those  after  ages 
when  the  world  seemed  to  be  breaking  up  before 
men's  eyes  and  lapsing  into  its  original  chaos. 
Indeed,  remembering  the  catalogue  of  ills,  such 
as  "to  behold  desert  a  beggar  bom,"  which  drove 
Shakespeare,  the  least  ascetic  of  poets,  to  cry  out 
for  restful  death,  and  reckoning  up  the  inevitable 
treacheries  of  hope  and  the  feeble  results  of  en- 
deavour, the  sullen  antipathies  or  the  light-heart- 
ed indifference  of  mankind  to  all  that  summons 
them  out  of  their  ephemeral  concerns — reflecting 
on  these  things,  I  should  not  dare  to  deny  that  one 
of  the  just  and  permanent  offices  of  philosophy 
is  to  create  for  the  anxious  soul  a  refuge  from 
the  world.  There  are  times  in  our  day,  as  there 
were  in  Plato's,  when  no  other  safety  or  comfort 
seems  open  to  us  than  the  way  of  flight.  I  would 
not  repudiate  the  great  passage  of  The  Republic 
in  which  Plato  sums  up  the  obstacles  confronting 
any  one  who,  living  the  philosophic  life,  would 
aim  to  be  both  in  the  world  and  of  the  world : 

496a  "Then,  Adeimantus,  I  said,  the  worthy  disci- 
ples of  philosophy  will  be  but  a  small  remnant: 
perchance  some  noble  and  well-educated  person, 
detained  by  exile  in  her  service,  who  in  the  ab- 
sence of  corrupting  influences  remains  devoted  to 


CONCLUSION  «87 

her;  or  some  lofty  soul  bom  in  a  mean  city,  the 
politics  of  which  he  contemns  and  neglects;  and 
there  may  be  a  gifted  few  who  leave  the  arts, 
which  they  justly  despise,  and  come  to  her; — or 
peradventure  there  are  some  who  are  restrained 
by  our  friend  Theages'  bridle;  for  everything  in 
the  Ufe  of  Theages  conspired  to  divert  him  from 
philosophy;  but  ill-health  kept  him  away  from 
politics.  My  own  case  of  the  internal  sign  is 
hardly  worth  mentioning,  for  rarely,  if  ever,  has 
such  a  monitor  been  given  to  any  other  man. 
Those  who  belong  to  this  small  class  have  tasted 
how  sweet  and  blessed  a  possession  philosophy  is, 
and  have  also  seen  enough  of  the  madness  of  the 
multitude;  and  they  know  that  no  politician  is 
honest,  nor  is  there  any  champion  of  justice  at 
whose  side  they  may  fight  and  be  saved.  Such 
a  one  may  be  compared  to  a  man  who  has  fallen 
among  wild  beasts — he  will  not  join  in  the 
wickedness  of  his  fellows,  but  neither  is  he  able 
singly  to  resist  all  their  fierce  natures,  and  there- 
fore seeing  that  he  would  be  of  no  use  to  the 
State  or  to  his  friends,  and  reflecting  that  he 
would  have  to  throw  away  his  life  without  doing 
any  good  either  to  himself  or  others,  he  holds  his 
peace,  and  goes  his  own  way.  He  is  like  one 
who,  in  the  storm  of  dust  and  sleet  which  the 
driving  wind  hurries  along,  retires  imder  the 
shelter  of  a  wall ;  and  seeing  the  rest  of  mankind 
full  of  wickedness,  he  is  content,  if  only  he  can 
live  his  own  life  and  be  pure  from  evil  or  un- 
righteousness, and  depart  in  peace  and  good- 
will, with  bright  hopes."    (Jowett's  translation.) 


288  PLATONISM 

These  are  the  moments  when,  looking  out  on 
the  futility  of  all  things  human,  we  say  that  the 
Poiiticus  272B  great  pilot  himself,  having  dropped  the  helm 
from  his  hands,  has  retired  apart  into  his  watch- 
tower  and  left  the  world  to  be  rolled  backward  in 
its  course  by  its  own  fated  and  innate  desire. 
Such  moments  of  dejection  will  come  to  every 
thinking  man,  and  for  these  too  philosophy  has 
its  healing  mission.  And  when  the  hour  of  part- 
ing is  at  hand  and  the  work  of  Hfe  is  accom- 
plished, as  on  that  day  in  the  Athenian  gaol  when 
Socrates  was  talking  for  the  last  time  with  his 
friends  and  disciples,  then,  also,  philosophy  will 
appear  as  a  study  of  death  and  a  long  prepara- 
tion for  surrender  of  the  concerns  of  this  earth. 

But  that  is  not  the  characteristic  note  of  Plato, 
nor  the  aspect  of  philosophy  on  which  it  is  well  to 
gaze  overmuch.  Rather,  we  should  dwell  on  the 
fulness  of  existence  that  belongs  by  right  to  him 
who  has  overcome  himself.  No  one,  I  think,  can 
read  the  Dialogues  without  being  impressed 
above  all  by  the  broad  sanity  of  the  Hfe  they  in- 
culcate and  display.  It  would  require  a  whole 
book  to  exhibit  this  truth  in  detail,  but  some  no- 
tion of  its  scope  can  be  obtained  by  taking  a  few 
sentences  from  a  Dialogue  in  which,  from  the 
nature  of  the  subject,  one  would  least  expect  to 
meet  with  these  practical  uses  of  philosophy.  If, 
caught  by  the  occasional  note  of  asceticism,  any 
one  believes  that  Plato's  teaching  is  contrary  to 


CONCLUSION  «89 

the  maxim  of  a  soimd  mind  in  a  somid  body,  he 
need  not  study  the  book  of  The  Republic  which 
deals  at  length  with  physical  training  as  a  prepa- 
ration for  the  higher  education,  but  may  find  the 
doctrine  stated  with  sufficient  explicitness  in  a 
few  passing  words  of  the  Timaeus.  "All  that  is  87c 
good  is  fair,"  it  is  there  said,  "and  the  fair  can- 
not be  lacking  in  proportion."  Hence  the  sound 
man  will  not  suffer  his  intelligence  to  grow  at 
the  expense  of  his  physical  strength — "the  soul 
must  not  be  exercised  to  the  neglect  of  the  body, 
nor  the  body  to  the  neglect  of  the  soul,  in  order 
that,  being  a  match  for  each  other,  they  may  at- 
tain balance  and  health."  That  is  the  founda- 
tion, but  beyond  this  the  whole  tenor  of  the  Dia- 
logue is  a  witness  to  Plato's  interest  in  the  play 
of  the  intellect  for  its  own  sake.  Particularly  in 
the  large  observations  of  natural  law  he  sees  a 
field  of  endless  and  elevated  activity;  "for,"  he  59c 
says,  "if  we  pursue  these  as  a  source  of  recrea- 
tion, not  forgetting  the  principle  of  eternal  being 
but  gaining  from  the  plausible  theories  of  phe- 
nomena a  pleasure  free  of  remorse,  we  may  create 
for  ourselves  a  sober  and  intelligent  entertain- 
ment for  life." 

Nor  does  the  concern  of  the  philosopher  end 
with  the  exercise  of  the  body  and  the  understand- 
ing; the  arts,  too,  will  be  included  in  his  purview, 
and  his  will  be  the  genuine  love  of  beauty. 
Whether  his  interest  is  in  mathematics,  or  in  any  ggc 


290  PLATONISM 

other  intellectual  pursuit,  he  will,  if  he  is  rightly 
to  be  called  a  cultivated  man,  apply  himself  to 
80b  the  arts — not,  indeed,  as  do  the  common  run  of 
the  thoughtless,  who  seek  for  pleasure  only  in 
lovely  forms  or  in  the  concourse  of  sweet  sounds, 
but  after  the  manner  of  those  wiser  men  who  find 
happiness  from  the  imitation  of  the  divine  har- 
mony in  mortal  motions.  Thus,  as  Plato  says 
Republic  549b  elsewhcrc,  philosophy  is  reason  tempered  by 
music,  the  best  guardian  and  saviour  of  the  soul, 
which  alone,  if  it  is  bom  in  man,  is  able  to  pre- 
serve him  in  virtue  to  the  end. 

Yet  there  is  also  in  these  studies  a  higher  aim 
than  the  immediate  gratification  and  safety  they 
offer.  Does  any  one  suppose  that  he  shall  reach 
up  forthright  to  the  assurance  of  spiritual  intui- 
tion, without  the  discipline  which  comes  from  ex- 
erting the  brain  in  the  lower  sphere  of  know- 
ledge, or  that  his  eyes  shall  see  God  before  they 
have  learned  to  look  with  sympathetic  interest 
upon  the  ordered  expanse  of  creation,  or  that  he 
shall  taste  the  mystery  of  eternity  when  he  has 
never  cared  to  acquire  the  long  lessons  of  time? 
Possibly  for  some  men  this  brief  and  unlaborious 
path  to  the  summit  may  lie  open;  but  they  will 
not  find  it  indicated  in  Plato. 

Philosophy,  as  Plato  expounded  it  in  the 
groves  of  the  Academy,  was  thus  the  fulness  of 
fife,  moving  ever  to  higher  and  richer  planes  of 
knowledge  and  feeling.    Yet  it  was  a  life,  also, 


CONCLUSION  291 

conditioned  by  the  moral  law,  consciously  present 
as  an  inner  check  setting  limits  to  the  grasp  of 
reason,  staying  the  flow  of  desires,  governing  the 
imagination,  bringing  not  stagnation  and  death, 
as  some  foolishly  suppose,  but  offering  the  true 
liberty  wherein  alone  is  the  fruition  of  our  na- 
ture, and  opposing  that  license  whose  end  is  the 
faction  and  disease  of  the  soul.  The  operation 
of  this  check,  the  manner  in  which  the  Spirit  of 
God  moves  upon  the  face  of  the  waters,  we  can- 
not explain;  it  is  of  the  very  essence  of  dualism 
that  the  relation  between  the  elements  of  our  be- 
ing cannot  be  stated  in  positive  terms.  The  be- 
ginning and  end  of  philosophy  are  contained  in 
the  spiritual  affirmation  that  it  is  better  to  be 
just  than  unjust,  better  to  suffer  all  things  for 
righteousness'  sake  than  to  do  unrighteousness; 
but  in  the  daily  practice  of  life  no  absolute  law 
of  just  dealing  has  been  vouchsafed  to  man,  and 
he  is  left  to  the  stem  necessity  of  approaching 
wisdom  humbly  by  the  slow  accumulations  of  ex- 
perience, and  of  learning  by  suffering.  It  should 
appear  that  Plato,  in  the  proposed  Dialogue  on 
the  Philosopher,  had  in  mind  to  answer  the  per- 
plexities of  the  dualistic  paradox  once  for  all, 
and  to  set  forth  the  law  of  the  spirit  in  the  lan- 
guage of  positive  metaphysics.  That  dialogue  he 
never  wrote,  in  honesty  to  himself  could  not 
write ;  and  who  shall  presume  to  supply  what  the 
master's  hand  left  undone? 


99%  PLATONISM 

"The  unfinished  window  in  Aladdin's  tower 
Unfinished  must  remain." 

But  Plato  has  done  for  us  better  than  his 
promise.  If  the  picture  of  the  philosopher  as  an 
abstract  ideal  was  not  drawn,  he  has  left  us  in  the 
character  and  lineaments  of  Socrates  an  immor- 
tal portrait  of  philosophy  incarnate  in  a  living 
historic  man.  I  shall  not  attempt  to  retell  a 
story  the  beauty  of  which  hes  open  for  any  one 
to  read  in  its  perfection.  It  is  sufficient  to  point 
to  the  lesson  of  that  life  as  a  practical  reconcilia- 
tion of  the  paradox  that  baffles  reason  and  drives 
so  many  troubled  minds  to  the  positive  extreme 
of  religious  asceticism  or  to  the  negative  extreme 
of  hedonism.  Socrates  was  no  ascetic;  I  doubt 
if  any  citizen  of  Athens  more  keenly  enjoyed  the 
common  pleasures  of  the  day,  or  was  more  heart- 
ily welcome  amongst  men  of  all  shades  of  belief 
and  all  modes  of  living — except  among  the  shams 
and  pretenders.  Yet,  withal,  he  walked  always 
with  his  ear  inclined  to  the  voice  of  the  divine  in- 
hibition; and  when  the  voice  spoke,  it  was  as  if 
an  invisible  wall  was  thrown  about  him,  shutting 
him  off  from  the  solicitations  of  the  world.  It  is 
not  only  that  he  could  mingle  innocent  indul- 
gence with  unflinching  self-restraint  and  combine 
acceptance  of  the  chances  of  fortune  with  the 
clearest  self -direction,  but  there  was  about  him  a 
reserve,  a  mark  of  power,  a  sign  of  emancipation, 
which  proved  that  he  had  bargained  with  life  on 


CONCLUSION  t9S 

his  own  terms.  Those  who  came  close  to  him 
knew  that  what  all  the  world  desired,  yet  threw 
away,  he  had. 

For,  however  we  may  calculate  the  sum  of 
pleasures  and  pains  in  such  an  existence  as  that 
of  Socrates,  the  records,  if  words  have  any  mean- 
ing, leave  us  in  no  uncertainty  as  to  his  happi- 
ness. At  the  end  of  the  account  of  his  last  day  in 
gaol  the  reporter  of  the  scene  declares  that  to  his  Phaedo  us 
friends  he  seemed  in  death  the  best  and  wisest 
and  most  just  of  all  men  they  had  known.  To 
these  epithets  the  reporter  might  well  have  add- 
ed "the  happiest."  That,  indeed,  is  the  strong- 
est and  most  enduring  impression  we  get  of  the 
man,  his  peculiar  testimony  to  the  reality  of  the 
spirit  and  to  the  value  of  philosophy — ^his  happi- 
ness. Other  saints  and  sages  have  pointed  the 
way  to  a  hfe  in  faith,  have  charmed  us  by  the 
sweetness  of  their  resignation,  incited  us  by  the 
fires  of  their  charity,  heartened  us  by  their  great 
courage,  humihated  us  by  their  superiority  to 
temptation,  allured  us  by  the  vision  of  heaven 
upon  their  faces,  taught  us,  in  a  measure,  the 
difference  between  the  peace  and  the  pleasure  of 
the  soul :  but  were  it  not  for  Socrates,  the  world, 
our  western  world  at  least,  would  have  no  assur- 
ance of  the  supreme  victory  of  the  truth  in  happi- 
ness. Herein  he  was  greater  than  his  greatest 
pupil.  With  all  Plato's  sweep  of  imagination 
and  depth  of  insight,  despite  the  fact  that  only 


294  PLATONISM 

through  his  sympathy  and  subtle  understanding 
are  the  master's  lineaments  really  known  to  us, 
there  are  signs  here  and  there  in  his  works  that 
he  himself  never  altogether  conquered  the  world 
or  rose  quite  above  the  mists  of  spiritual  pride. 
I  do  not  mean,  in  these  closing  words,  to  belit- 
tle the  achievement  of  one  whose  writings  are  the 
purest  source  of  philosophy  yet  given  to  man- 
kind; but  it  is  true,  nevertheless,  that,  though 
Plato  could  perceive  and  depict  the  serenity  of 
Socrates,  he  could  not  completely  possess  it.  And 
when,  in  his  searching  of  many  questions,  he 
went  astray  into  doubtful  paths,  as  now  and  then 
he  did,  leaving  the  door  open  to  the  strange  mis- 
conceptions and  confusions  of  a  pseudo-Platon- 
ism,  it  was  because  for  the  moment  he  allowed 
himself  to  become  unfaithful  to  the  humility  of 
spirit  which  was  as  much  the  strength  of  So- 
crates as  was  his  certainty  of  spiritual  conviction. 
There  is  a  quaint  story  in  Diogenes  Laertius 
which  tells  how  Socrates  once  met  Xenophon  in 
a  narrow  lane,  and,  putting  his  staif  across  it  so 
as  to  prevent  the  young  man's  passage,  asked  him 
where  the  various  necessities  of  life  were  for  sale. 
And  when  Xenophon  had  answered,  he  asked 
again  where  men  might  be  made  good  and  virtu- 
ous. And,  receiving  no  reply,  he  said,  "Follow 
me,  then,  and  learn."  So,  as  we  read  the  Dia- 
logues of  Plato,  the  figure  of  Socrates  seems  t(j 
rise  before  us,  challenging  us  with  his  queries,  and 


CONCLUSION  «96 

bidding  us  follow  him  in  the  pursuit  of  truth  and 
goodness.  He  would  not  say,  if  he  were  to  meet 
us  now,  that  we  should  make  his  hfe  in  ancient 
Athens  the  exact  model  of  our  conduct,  for  that 
was  determined  by  the  ephemeral  circumstances 
of  the  hour ;  he  would  rather  command  us  to  deal 
honestly  with  ourselves  and  others,  as  he  had 
done,  and  to  look  for  our  reward  in  that  happi- 
ness which  is  the  crown  of  philosophy. 

THE  END 


APPENDIX 

For  the  beginner  in  Platonism  the  order  of  reading 
the  Dialogues  is  of  the  first  importance.  The  effect 
of  plunging  through  Plato's  works  as  they  are  ar- 
ranged in  any  of  the  existing  editions  or  translations 
known  to  me  is  likely  to  be  a  state  of  bewilderment  as 
to  what  all  the  talk  is  about.  The  traditional  arrange- 
ment by  tetralogies  (groups  of  four)  is  arbitrary;  un- 
related Dialogues  are  there  forced  together  by  some 
purely  accidental  resemblance,  while  others,  closely  re- 
lated in  subject,  may  be  widely  separated.  On  the 
other  hand  none  of  the  modem  rearrangements  is,  in 
my  judgment,  satisfactory.  Now,  two  principles  of 
sequence  are  open  to  us,  the  chronological  and  the  logi- 
cal; but  neither  of  them  is  without  difficulties.  The 
chronological  order  in  itself  no  doubt  would  be  the  most 
natural,  if  only  we  had  some  infallible  criterion  as  to 
the  relative  time  of  composition.  It  is  true  that  certain 
large  outlines  of  sequence  by  this  canon  have  been 
pretty  generally  agreed  on,  but  the  details  are  still 
disputed  and  are  not  likely  ever  to  be  settled.  We  are 
thus  thrown  upon  the  logical  order  of  ideas;  but  here 
again  there  are  serious  difficulties.  Plato  did  not  al- 
ways finish  one  subject  and  then  pass  on  to  another; 
on  the  contrary  his  themes  often  cross  one  another  in 
such  a  way  that  in  a  pair  of  Dialogues  one  theme  may 
be  more  developed  in  what  thus  seems  to  be  the  later  of 
the  two  in  logical  order,  while  the  treatment  of  another 

997 


298  PLATONISM 

theme  would  indicate  that  this  Dialogue  was  the  earlier. 
Our  only  recourse,  therefore,  is  a  compromise,  and  in 
the  arrangement  that  follows  I  have  proceeded  frankly 
on  that  principle.  In  the  main  the  groups  there  formed 
would  appear  to  follow  one  another  in  the  time  of  com- 
position, as  they  do,  largely  considered,  in  the  logical 
order  of  ideas ;  but  it  is  probable  that  in  some  cases  a 
Dialogue  included  in  a  later  group,  for  instance  the 
biographical,  was  written  before  some  one  of  an  earlier, 
let  us  say,  the  Socratic,  group.  Within  the  groups  the 
arrangement  is  logical  and  probably  also,  for  the  most 
part,  chronological,  though  here  again  it  was  necessary 
to  compromise.  I  can  only  say  that  the  scheme  is  the 
one  that  seems  to  me,  after  reading  Plato  through  many 
times,  to  give  the  clearest  general  notion  of  the  de- 
velopment of  his  philosophy.  The  analyses  which  fol- 
low the  diagram  are,  patently,  of  the  most  meagre  sort. 
They  make  no  pretension  even  to  indicate  the  large  sub- 
sidiary questions,  often  in  themselves  profoundly  in- 
teresting, which  branch  out  from  the  main  ethical  thread 
of  Plato's  thought. 


APPENDIX 

SUGGESTED  ORDER  OF  READING 


S99 


I.  So- 
cratic 


Char- 
mides 

Protag- 
oras 
.  Gorgias 


II.  Bio- 
graphic 


'  Euthy- 

phro 
Apology 
Crito 
Phaedo 


III.  Ideal 


Meno 
Phaedrus 
1  Sjrmpos- 
lum 


IV.  The  Republic 


fCratylus 
I  Euthydemus 
V.  Metaphysical  ^heaetetu.^ 


VI.  Co8mologicaljpJJ|5*^^g 


VII.  Laws 


Minor 


Laches 
Theages 
Lysis 

I  and  II  Alcibiades 
Rivals 
Hipparchus 

Major  and  Minor  Hippias 
lo 

Menexenus 
Clitopho 
Critias 
Minos 
,  Epinomis 


800  PLATONISM 

The  Socratic  Group 

In  general  these  Dialogues  are  aporistic,  that  is,  they 
set  forth  the  difSculties  and  bearing  of  a  question  with- 
out coming  to  a  definite  conclusion. 

The  Charmides  deals  with  the  nature  of  temperance. 
No  satisfactory  definition  is  discovered,  but  we  are  left 
with  the  suggestion  that  somehow  the  virtues  run  to- 
gether into  one  and  are  connected  with  some  form  of 
knowledge. 

The  Protagoras  asks  whether  virtue  can  be  taught 
like  the  arts.  Thus  again  the  question  is  raised  whether 
the  virtues  are  all  identical  with  some  form  of  know- 
ledge. In  what  seems  to  be  a  digression,  but  is  really 
the  main  point  of  progress  from  the  Charmides,  So- 
crates suggests  that  virtue  may  depend  on  a  science  of 
measurement,  by  which  we  calculate  the  sum  of  pleasure 
and  pain  resulting  from  any  act.  According  to  this 
theory  of  hedonism  the  virtuous  man  would  be  he  who 
can  foresee  most  clearly  the  future,  and  the  criterion  of 
virtue  would  be  pleasure. 

The  Gorgias  proves  that  pleasure  and  pain  do  not 
furnish  a  sufficient  law  of  morality,  and  takes  refuge 
in  the  intuition  that  justice  (which  now  appears  as  the 
moral  sense,  or  sum  of  the  virtues)  is  better  for  a  man 
than  injustice.  It  hints  at  a  distinction  between  pleas- 
ure and  happiness,  but  appeals  to  the  judgment  after 
death  to  set  right  the  apparent  injustice  of  this  life. 

The  Biographic  Group 

These  four  Dialogues  are  connected  with  the  trial 
and  death  of  Socrates.  Together  they  give  a  portrait 
of  him  at  the  consummation  of  his  life  as  the  philo- 


APPENDIX  «01 

sopher  par  excellerice,  and  are  thus  a  concrete  practi- 
cal presentation  of  the  intuition  reached  in  the  earlier 
group. 

The  Euthyphro  presents  Socrates,  at  the  eve  of  his 
trial,  talking  with  a  young  friend  on  the  nature  of 
holiness.  Euthyphro  has  no  doubt  of  his  perfect  know- 
ledge of  this  virtue  as  a  practical  conformity  with  the 
will  of  the  gods.  Socrates,  who  is  about  to  defend  him- 
self against  the  charge  of  impiety,  does  not  question 
the  reality  of  holiness  as  an  eternal  Idea  to  be  sought 
for  and  obeyed,  but  brings  out  the  difficulty  of  de- 
termining what  in  any  case  is  the  will  of  the  gods.  To 
know  this  we  must  first  know  what  holiness  is. 

The  Apology  sets  forth  the  divine  mission  of  So- 
crates as  one  called  to  lead  his  people  to  consider  the 
needs  of  the  soul  before  those  of  the  body.  The  spirit- 
ual affirmation  is  connected  with  scepticism,  and  the 
probability  of  an  adjustment  of  the  wrongs  of  life  in  a 
future  world  is  still  maintained. 

The  Crito  shows  Socrates  in  gaol,  unjustly  condemned 
to  death,  yet  unwilling  to  evade  human  laws  by  brib- 
ing his  way  to  liberty.  The  belief  is  expressed  that 
obedience  to  these  decrees  of  the  State  will  prepare  a 
man  to  face  the  judgment  of  the  Divine  Laws. 

The  Phaedo  shows  Socrates  dying  for  his  conviction, 
in  happiness.  He  is  happy  because  his  real  life  here 
and  now  is  in  the  eternal  immutable  world  of  Ideas,  and 
to  this  life  there  is  neither  beginning  nor  end. 

The  Ideal  Group 

What  is  this  world  of  Ideas  in  which  the  philo- 
sopher lives? 

The  MeTU)  resumes  the  old  question  whether  virtue  is 


80«  PLATONISM 

a  form  of  knowledge  which  can  be  imparted  by  instruc- 
tion. It  connects  Ideas  with  the  things  of  eternity  by 
the  argument  of  reminiscence.  Our  knowledge  of  them, 
and  our  impulse  to  virtue,  is  a  memory  of  our  vision  of 
absolute  justice  and  goodness  in  some  former  existence. 

The  Phaedrus  places  Ideas  in  a  mythical  superceles- 
tial  sphere,  as  the  Meno  regarded  them  in  a  mythical 
time.  The  argument  looks  forward  also  to  the  meta- 
physical problem  of  truth  and  falsehood. 

The  Symposium  brings  Ideas  into  life  as  an  ethical 
force  by  exhibiting  the  love  and  desire  they  excite  in 
the  soul  by  the  attraction  of  their  beauty. 

The  Republic 

Here  the  arguments  of  the  earlier  groups  are  de- 
veloped and  woven  together  into  a  single  strand.  Jus- 
tice is  the  moral  sense,  and  the  other  virtues  are  the 
specific  applications  of  it.  The  just  man,  as  he  is  just, 
is  happy,  now  and  here,  and  there  is  no  need  to  appeal 
to  future  rewards  and  punishments.  Justice  and  hap- 
piness are  the  effect  of  the  Idea  of  the  Good  as  the 
supreme  cause.  The  philosopher  is  he  whose  life  is 
governed  by  this  cause.  The  knowledge  of  ourselves  as 
happy  in  justice  is  an  immediate  certain  intuition  (the 
spiritual  affirmation),  above  the  practical  knowledge, 
or  opinion,  which,  working  in  the  sphere  of  the  specific 
virtues,  is  always  subject  to  confirmation  by  the 
future.  The  constitution  of  the  ideal  State  is  expound- 
ed as  a  counterpart  of  the  perfect  philosopher. 

The  Metaphysical  Group 

As  The  Republic  was  the  focus  of  the  earlier  dis- 
cussions, so  from  it  radiate  the  later  questions.     The 


APPENDIX  303 

earlier  contention  had  been  with  the  rhetorical  sophists 
who,  as  a  class,  ignored  the  authority  of  the  moral  law 
as  having  any  stability  apart  from  the  universal  flux. 
Now  the  ground  shifts  to  the  question  of  knowledge 
itself;  passing  from  the  naive  to  the  metaphysical 
doubts  of  sophistry.  The  Theaetetus,  Sophist,  and 
Politictu  are  internally  connected,  and  almost  certainly 
follow  in  this  order.  The  Cratylus  and  Euthydemus 
are  probably  earlier,  possibly  a  good  deal  earlier.  The 
Parmenides,  logically  considered,  seems  to  me  to  fall 
best  between  the  Theaetetus  and  the  Sophist;  but  there 
are  undeniable  objections  to  this  arrangement. 

The  Cratylus  plays  with  the  absurdities  involved  in 
the  popular  notion  of  the  universal  flux  as  betrayed  by 
the  etymologies  of  language,  and  proves  the  inadequacy 
of  such  a  criterion  for  any  one  earnestly  in  search  of  the 
truth. 

The  Euthydemus  makes  sport  of  the  thesis  that  there 
is  no  distinction  between  knowledge  and  opinion,  truth 
and  falsehood.  It  eliminates  this  thesis  by  a  reduction 
to  the  absurd. 

The  Theatetus  debates  the  question.  What  is  know- 
ledge? Protagoras  had  argued  that  knowledge  is  ob- 
tained only  by  perception,  that  there  is  therefore  no 
distinction  between  kinds  of  knowledge,  and  that  the 
sensations  of  the  individual  are  the  only  measure  of 
truth.  Socrates  rebuts  these  theses,  but  comes  to  no 
satisfactory  conclusion  as  to  the  nature  of  knowledge, 
that  is  of  knowledge  as  a  relation  between  subject  and 
object.  But  he  also  strongly  reaffirms  the  spiritual  fact 
that  we  know  it  is  best  for  a  man  to  live  in  the  world 
of  Ideas,  and  to  imitate  in  his  conduct,  so  far  as  this 
is  possible,  the  justice  of  the  divine  nature. 


804  PLATONISM 

The  Parmemdes  first  acknowledges  the  difficulties  in- 
herent in  any  rational  explanation  of  the  doctrine  of 
Ideas  (and  of  the  moral  certainty  dependent  on  this 
doctrine).  Secondly,  it  affirms  the  necessity  of  main- 
taining this  doctrine,  and  exhibits  the  inadequacy  of  the 
metaphysical  use  of  reason  to  prove  or  disprove  what 
we  possess  by  the  higher  intuition. 

The  Sophist  now  shows  the  proper  use  of  the  reason, 
controlled  by  the  content  of  experience,  when  dealing 
with  the  questions  raised  by  the  metaphysical  logician. 
First  it  arrives  at  a  physical  definition  of  the  sophist; 
then  passes  to  his  character;  then  discusses  the  nature 
of  being  and  not-being  (the  relative),  and  sets  down 
the  sophist  as  one  who  deals  with  the  realm  of  not- 
being.  Meanwhile  the  second  argument  of  the  Parmen- 
ides,  the  necessity  of  maintaining  the  doctrine  of  Ideas 
as  an  intuition  superior  to  metaphysics,  has  been  re- 
stated in  summarized  form. 

The  Politicus  undertakes  to  discuss  the  character  of 
the  statesman  on  the  same  level  as  the  discussion  of  the 
sophist.  Its  most  interesting  part  is  the  long  mythical 
digression  on  the  forward  and  backward  revolutions  of 
the  world  as  it  is  now  guided  by  the  divine  will  and 
now  left  to  move  by  its  own  innate  impulsion. 

The  Cosmological  Group 

The  exact  chronological  place  of  these  two  Dialogues 
is  problematic.  Logically  they  may  be  taken  as  a  sequel 
and  development  of  the  mythical  digression  of  the 
Politicus. 

The  Timaeus  turns  from  metaphysics  to  cosmogony. 
The  dualism  of  knowledge  and  opinion  has  been  forti- 
fied against  the  attacks  of  sophist  and  eristic ;  the  uni- 


APPENDIX  806 

verse  is  now  shown  to  present  itself  to  us  in  a  corre- 
sponding dualism  of  the  Divine  and  Necessity.  To  the 
former  belong  ethical  Ideas ;  science  ranges  in  a  region 
between  the  two.  The  essential  parts  of  the  first  ac- 
count of  creation  will  be  found  in  sections  27d  to  31b, 
84a  to  35b,  36d  to  38c,  39e  and  40a,  41a  to  43c ;  of  the 
second  account  in  sections  47e  to  62d,  69a  to  70b,  70de. 
The  Philebus  returns  to  the  old  question  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  but  with  the  results  of  the  metaphysical  in- 
quiry as  a  background.  Which  is  the  higher,  pleasure 
or  knowledge,  and  what  is  their  relative  position  in  the 
universal  scheme?  In  answering  this  question  the  na- 
ture of  things  is  divided  into  the  cause,  the  limit,  the 
limited,  and  the  limitless ;  the  cause  being  equivalent  to 
the  Divine  and  the  limitless  to  the  Necessity  of  the 
Timaeus,  while  the  limit  and  the  limited  are  the  eflFect 
of  the  interworking  of  the  two  extremes.  Pleasure  be- 
longs to  the  limitless,  knowledge  (of  the  sort  embraced 
by  science)  to  the  limit.  This  return  to  the  question  of 
pleasure,  now  treated  without  the  ascetic  bias  of  the 
middle  Dialogues,  prepares  us  for  the  main  ethical  theme 
of  the  Laws. 

The  Laws 

The  life  of  man  is  discussed  in  relation  to  education, 
art,  and  religion,  not  measured  by  the  ideal  criterion  of 
happiness  as  in  The  Republic,  but  by  practical  con- 
siderations of  pleasure.  On  this  same  basis  a  system  of 
laws  is  devised,  not  for  an  ideal  State,  but  for  the  best 
feasible  State  in  which  the  individual  may  freely  de- 
velop. This  Dialogue  is  known  to  be  the  work  of  Plato's 
last  days,  and  it  is  in  many  respects  a  summing  up  and 
revision  of  all  his  previous  writings. 


806  PLATONISM 

The  Minor  Dialogues 

These  I  have  separated  from  the  main  groups,  in 
some  cases  because  they  are  trivial  and  probably  spur- 
ious, and  in  other  cases  because,  in  essential  matters, 
they  do  not  advance  upon  one  of  the  included  Dialogues. 
In  either  case,  it  is  well  for  the  reader  who  approaches 
Plato  for  the  first  time  to  leave  all  of  them,  except  per- 
haps the  Laches  and  Theages,  to  the  end.  The  Men- 
exenus,  in  particular,  raises  the  question  of  authenticity. 
Judging  this  Dialogue  by  intrinsic  evidence  alone,  I 
should  have  been  inclined  to  reject  it  as  spurious,  as 
some  critics  do  not  hesitate  actually  to  do.  Yet  Aris- 
totle apparently  accepted  it  as  Platonic,  and  we  know 
from  Cicero  that  in  his  day  it  was  so  much  admired  as 
to  be  recited  annually  at  Athens.  Such  testimony  ought 
to  instil  modesty  into  the  modem  scholar.  Some  of 
the  Dialogues,  for  example  the  First  and  Second  Alcir- 
biades,  read  as  if  they  were  composed  by  an  accredited 
pupil  of  the  Academy  while  Plato  was  still  alive,  and 
as  such  might  be  called  semi-authentic.  But  this  ex- 
planation, of  course,  I  offer  as  pure  conjecture. 

The  Laches,  Theages,  and  Lysis,  dealing  respectively 
with  courage,  wisdom,  and  friendship,  might  form  a 
class  by  themselves  with  the  Charmides. 

The  First  and  Second  Alcibiades  have  many  points  in 
common  with  the  Euthyphro.  The  Rivals  asks  who  the 
philosopher  is,  and  answers  that  it  is  he  who  knows 
himself,  and  hence  knows  how  to  govern  and  give  judg- 
ment. The  Hipparchus  debates  the  meaning  of  the 
profitable. 

The  Hippias  Major  is  on  the  nature  of  beauty.  The 
Hippias  Minor  discusses  ignorance  as  the  real  source  of 


APPENDIX  901 

evil.  The  lo  deals  with  poetry  and  the  poet,  and  the 
Menexenus  with  oratory. 

The  Clitopho  shows  Socrates  taken  to  task  because 
he  has  never  given  a  positive  definition  of  justice.  It 
properly  forms  an  introduction  to  The  Republic.  The 
Critias,  an  unfinished  sequel  to  The  Republic,  was  de- 
signed to  narrate  the  heroic  war  of  Athens  with  the 
mythical  kingdom  of  Atlantis. 

The  Minos,  on  the  nature  of  law,  may  be  taken  as 
introductory  to  the  Laws.  The  Eptnomis,  which  pur- 
ports to  be  a  continuation  of  the  Laws^  is  in  my  judg- 
ment spurious. 

To  the  body  of  the  Dialogues  is  appended  a  collec- 
tion of  thirteen  Letters,  which  I  have  never  been  able  to 
accept  as  genuine,  despite  their  early  admission  into 
the  canon  by  critics  of  antiquity.  Whether  genuine  or 
not,  they  are  an  important  source  for  the  facts  of 
Plato's  life. 

The  brief  Definitions  of  philosophic  terms  can  scarce- 
ly be  Plato's,  but  probably  were  composed  for  use  in 
the  Academy. 

Finally,  in  some  editions  there  are  six  Dialogues  ap- 
pended, all  trivial,  which  are  certainly  spurious,  and 
were  so  regarded  in  antiquity.  They  need  not  be  con- 
sidered. 


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